RESEARCH PAPER TOPIC: BIOFUELS

Identify a current engineering technology, design, product, concept or innovation that has the potential for significant societal impacts if widely deployed. Your Social Impact Analysis should reference credible sources of information on your chosen topic. Your sources might be scientific and engineering journal articles, popular publications, patents, copyrights, etc. You should use one of the standard citation styles (APA, MLA, Turabian, or Chicago) to cite your sources. You may use the Internet to do your research, but if you do, be sure to cite the source including a hyperlink.

Address the following in your paper:

Background: 

Provide a description of the design, product, or concept.

Who is responsible for creating/producing/building it?

What need is it intended to fill?

Who are the affected stakeholders, both direct and indirect?

What positive consequences are anticipated for:

The organization responsible for the developing the new design/product?

The intended users of the design/product?

Others who are not directly using the design/product but nevertheless might be affected by it?

What negative consequences are anticipated if this innovation were widely deployed?

What can be done to minimize or mitigate any negative consequences?

Position:

Apply the ethical theory (utilitarianism, RFP, or virtue ethics) you find most plausible to this topic. Your application should be detailed (e.g. apply a specific variant of utilitarianism such as pluralistic rule-utilitarianism) and demonstrate an understanding of the mechanics of the approach. You may also apply your discipline's code of ethics in detail. This means you will need to explain how key concepts such as 'safety' or 'welfare' should be interpreted in your application. Make sure you clearly explain and defend your application.

Should the deployment of this design/product continue? Explain and justify your answer.

Anticipate and respond to 1-2 of the strongest, most plausible objections to your position.

Details:

Your topic proposal must be approved before submitting the final version of your paper.

The paper should be approximately 2000 words in length.  

 Anything you quote AND/OR paraphrase must be cited. Please use the citation style you are most comfortable with. Papers that lack appropriate citation will be heavily penalized or failed depending on the severity of the mistake.

Your references must include both 1) In-text citation and 2) a works cited at the end of your paper.

Your paper should be clearly organized and include section headers.