Abortion: Drawing a Line of Moral Permissibility in Fetal Development

The goals of this thesis are to first examine prominent arguments in philosophical and religious ethics regarding the morality of induced abortions, and then to create my own moral argument regarding induced abortion by drawing a line during fetal development. I will first discuss the biological stages of fetal development, the effects of pregnancy on a pregnant woman, and the mechanics of common induced abortion procedures. Next, I will present and analyze renowned philosophical arguments regarding the morality of abortion. Then, I will present and analyze arguments regarding the morality of induced abortions drawn from two religious traditions - Roman Catholicism and Reform Judaism. Finally, I will present my moral argument, which picks out a discrete stage of fetal development that determines the morality of induced abortion

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Nolanville Comprehensive Plan 2021-2041

Nearly five years after the completion of the 2015 Comprehensive Plan, TxTC partnered with the City of Nolanville again in 2019 with the ENDEAVR project. ENDEAVR (Envisioning the Neo-traditional Development by Embracing the Autonomous Vehicles Realm)— is an ambitious project to re-envision ”smart” city solutions in small towns with students from a wide range of university degree programs in urban planning, landscape architecture, visualization, computer science, and civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. ENDEAVR launched in 2018 with a $300,000 grant from the Keck Foundation, which supports projects that promote inventive educational approaches. The City of Nolanville sought to explore “smart” city solutions to make efficient and prudent improvements to traffic flow, public safety, optimize utility systems, high-bandwidth digital networks, and foster autonomous vehicles. Additionally, TxTC included these “smart” city solutions to update its 2015 comprehensive plan. The new 2020 comprehensive plan embeds “smart” city solutions into its priorities and capital improvement projects to foster diversity and continue to make Nolanville “A Great Place to Live”