This is probably my last post of 2012. Thanks to everyone who read and followed this blog. I hope I can make it better in 2013.
You can help me make it better with you relevant comments on my posts. The comments of people work work in the environment and infrastructure, coming from a variety of fields, can enrich the sharing of knowledge. Questions are welcome, too. Post your questions in the comments section of the post and I'll try to answer it.
I'd like to include more photos next year, maybe even videos. Let me know what you think.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Don’t Fear the Nexus
Our infrastructure for water, energy, transportation, and food is all
interconnected. Changes to one has
consequences in the others. Below are
links to several articles that explore these interconnections.
Energy & Water
Food & Water
Other
Fluoridation Comes to California City
I previously
mentioned that I was once an ostensible state fluoridation engineer. Because of this, stories related to
fluoridation still catch my eye.
This week the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which supplies
drinking water to the San Jose, California, approved
a plan to fluoridate water. This
won’t be an immediate change. It will
take the Santa Clara Valley Water District two years to upgrade its three water
treatment plants. In addition, several
wells operated by the San Jose Water Company will need to be upgraded for
fluoride addition.
Fluoride is added to drinking water to prevent tooth decay. Fluoridation can reduce tooth decay in
children up to 40 percent. An estimated
$38 dollars in dental treatment costs is saved for every $1 spent on
fluoridation. Water fluoridation in the
U.S. has been common since the 1960s.
Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised recommendations for optimal fluoride
doses in drinking water. You can find
more about water fluoridation at the CDC Web→ site
or Environmental
Protection Agency Web site→.
For this post, I drew heavily on an article by Julia Prodis Sulek on
the Mercury News Web site→.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Going Subterranean in Paris
Writing for Intelligent Life, Will Hunt
describes a trip from one side of Paris to the
other that was almost entirely underground
in his article, “Going Souterrain.” Modern cities have huge underground
infrastructure, and some are large enough to permit men to travel through,
though this is dangerous and almost uniformly illegal. In a city as that also ancient, like Paris
which has areas that were populated back in Roman times, that goes double.
There are two things in Hunt’s article that I find particularly
interesting. First, underground portions
of Paris are tourist attractions and have been for a long time. I would be such a tourist, but I realize I’m
in a minority. Second, Paris has as
subculture of cataphiles,
people who enjoy spending time in the catacombs and other underground
structures of that city. They hang out
in popular places, party, and sometime explore.
I do not advocate that unprepared amateurs should trespass on private
property or enter underground utility tunnels or sewers. As I mentioned, it is dangerous. I do recommend reading “Going
Soutterain."
Barge Traffic Threatened on Missouri & Mississippi Rivers
Levels on the Missouri
and Mississippi
Rivers continue to drop. One of the
consequences of low river levels is the dangers it poses to navigation,
especially to barge
traffic. Low levels have exposed rocks
and sand bars on both rivers.
Barges on these rivers transport
a lot of goods, especially commodities. This is a significant part of the economy
of states
along these rivers, especially those on the lower Mississippi River. For instance, in Missouri
the Missouri
Economic Research and Information Center estimated that nearly $3 billion
in Missouri commodities, mostly agricultural
products, are shipped on water. Water freight
generates an estimated $388 million annually in gross
state product (GSP) in
Missouri.
To some degree, flow in these rivers is controlled by dams
operated by the U.S. Army
Corp of Engineers. Officials and
businesses along the Mississippi River have asked the Corp to release more
water. The Corp agreed, and on December
15 began releasing water Carlyle
Lake (a little more than 50 miles east of St. Louis)
on the Kaskaskia
River, which flows into the Mississippi River a few a few miles downstream
of Ste.
Genevieve, Missouri.
The Corp has tried to tame these rivers for more than a century,
managing them for navigation, flood
control, and other purposes. It may not
get any easier. Many are predicting that
climate
change will result in more droughts
and flooding along with more frequent extreme high and low levels of water in
the rivers.
A couple of days ago, IW was quick to draw
knives on a proposal to pump water from the Missouri River to the Colorado
River through a pipeline that would run from Leavenworth,
Kansas,
to Denver,
Colorado. Recently Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
admitted that this was not a practicable plan and that western states need to
seek solutions elsewhere.
Related articles and posts
DOT Inspector General Gets Extension to Spend Stimulus Funds
The American
Recovery and Investment Act (ARRA) provided
funds for inspectors
general at agencies receiving supplementary appropriations
through the act to conduct investigations related to the spending of the funds,
oversight of projects, and compliance with special requirements. A subsequent act directed act (the Dodd-Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) required the return to the Treasury
of unobligated ARRA funds after December 31, 2012, unless the president found
it was not in the national interest to do so.
At the request of several inspectors general, including the one at the Department of
Transportation, President
Barack Obama waived the recession of ARRA funds for the inspectors general
so they could continue long-term investigations and oversight.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Book Review: #STEM Books for #DeSTEMber
I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related
books (and counting). STEM is an acronym
for science,
technology,
engineering, and mathematics. As you may have seen in the news, there is a
push to improve STEM education,
interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers
in these fields. The idea is that these
will be the skills needed by workers of the future. If you’re a STEM educator or a student
considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of
these books.
How to Build an Android: The True Story of
Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the
Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
by Earl Swift
Earl
Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads. If you interested in automobiles or transportation, it’s a good
read.
Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah
Cadbury
Though the
book is history, many of the structures still stand. Railways, the Brooklyn
Bridge, the Suez and Panama
Canals, and Hoover
Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.
The Physics of Superheroes by James
Kakalios
Physicist John
Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes. Sometimes comics get there science
right. Even when they get it wrong, it
can be instructive. If you know what
people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this
book to be a great introduction to physics.
1089 and All That: A Journey into
Mathematics by David Acheson
I recommend
this book because so many people have a fear of math. 1089
can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math
phobias. Just take a deep breath, relax,
and follow along as well as you can.
You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a
way.
The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said it Couldn’t
be Built by Judith St. George
Why should a
cutting-edge STEM student read about a bridge that is almost 130 years
old? It’s because we still use and rely
on very successful, centuries old technologies.
Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an
important part of our economy. As recently as 2010, New
York City and the federal government committed $500 million
to repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone
Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski
Henry
Petroski, a professor of civil
engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes
there is an important difference. At
heart, science is about increasing knowledge. Engineering is about invention. Of course, new knowledge makes new invention
possible. Just as often, though, engineering
runs ahead of science. Sometimes science
didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments to conduct new
observations and experiments. The
invention of the microscope made possible
the science of microbiology. Steam
engines were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific
understanding of thermodynamics. In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent
born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an
engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science
(study of natural things) or branch of physics.
Petroski’s
focus in the book is the importance of engineering to policymaking, where it is
often overshadowed by science. Policy,
science, and engineering play off of each other a lot. Most of my career as an engineer has been
related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most
Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas
Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
Of course,
what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition is that it was a
great adventure. There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful
adventurers and explorers.
Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our
Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson
Jan
Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a morbid
book. It is sometimes humorous, especially in
consideration of topic. From a STEM
point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over time. The fears and activities of our forefathers
may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of what they
knew. Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the
book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it
reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility. Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.
If you’re looking
for something for a younger student, check out this post→ from Joanne
Loves Science or these
recommendations→ from STEM
Friday. By the way, I also write about
engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.
I’ll confess that I’m not an educator, but I think most of these books
will be accessible to high school and college students, and a few to middle
school students. The list is also a
reflection of my career and interests in engineering, public
health, policy,
and history. Even with these biases, I think it is a good
list for someone looking for STEM-related books.
How to Build an Android: The True Story of
Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty
I was fascinated by robots as a
kid. I enjoyed reading Isaac Asimov’s
robot stories. I longed for the Omnibot
2000 in the Sears Wishbook.
Robots have come a long way. In How to Build an Android, David F. Dufty
describes the short strange life of a very complex robot made to look and talk
like science
fiction author Philip K.
Dick. The robot had a very
sophisticated and lifelike head and complex artificial
intelligence. As with most complex
things, it was the work of many people who had to solve a lot of problems.
If you’re interested in robotics, this is an interesting nontechnical
book. In addition, you’ll get introduced
to some freaky sci-fi. You may even get
as (somewhat) legitimate reason to use the word “Dickhead” (capitalized, it
refers to a fan of PKD, so don’t go using it on anyone).
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the
Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
by Earl Swift
The Interstate highway system in the United States is one of the most enormous structures built. Some of the prospective STEM students who read this may actually be younger than the Intestate system, though in some sense it is never complete because it needs constant repair and maintenance. The Interstates were completed in the 1990s, but the Federal-Aid Highways go back to 1916.
Earl
Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads. If you interested in automobiles or transportation, it’s a good
read.
Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah
Cadbury
Deborah Cadbury describes seven wonders of engineering in Dreams of Iron and Steel. It covers almost a century of history, but many of the events are concentrated in the Victorian Era. That was a time of great technological innovation.
Though the
book is history, many of the structures still stand. Railways, the Brooklyn
Bridge, the Suez and Panama
Canals, and Hoover
Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.
The Physics of Superheroes by James
Kakalios
Though the memory of Professor Wragg’s sneer prompts me to not make this confession, part of my interest in science and technology came from comic books. Iron Man was cool. Spider-Man’s web shooters were very cool. Superhero comics are full of fantasy, admittedly, but the strange, unrealistic science and technology they depict have inspired many to study STEM in reality.
Physicist John
Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes. Sometimes comics get there science
right. Even when they get it wrong, it
can be instructive. If you know what
people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this
book to be a great introduction to physics.
1089 and All That: A Journey into
Mathematics by David Acheson
Here is another confession: I’m not especially interested in math. I endured a lot of math classes to study engineering. Reading David Acheson’s 1089 and All That did not require such endurance. For one reason, it is a short book. For another, Acheson doesn’t expect his readers to be mathematicians; it is enough to follow the outline of the math he discusses.
I recommend
this book because so many people have a fear of math. 1089
can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math
phobias. Just take a deep breath, relax,
and follow along as well as you can.
You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a
way.
The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said it Couldn’t
be Built by Judith St. George
Judith St. George’s The Brooklyn Bridge is a short history of and iconic bridge. Written for the bridge’s 100th anniversary, it is also the story of the engineers who sacrificed life and health to see it completed: John Roebling and his son Washington. John Roebling was a German immigrant who built many suspension bridges and owed a wire-making business. He gave his son and extraordinary education in bridge engineering for the time, and before beginning work on the Brooklyn Bridge he served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Why should a
cutting-edge STEM student read about a bridge that is almost 130 years
old? It’s because we still use and rely
on very successful, centuries old technologies.
Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an
important part of our economy. As recently as 2010, New
York City and the federal government committed $500 million
to repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone
Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski
STEM lumps together science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Is there a difference between science and engineering? Is it important?
Henry
Petroski, a professor of civil
engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes
there is an important difference. At
heart, science is about increasing knowledge. Engineering is about invention. Of course, new knowledge makes new invention
possible. Just as often, though, engineering
runs ahead of science. Sometimes science
didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments to conduct new
observations and experiments. The
invention of the microscope made possible
the science of microbiology. Steam
engines were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific
understanding of thermodynamics. In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent
born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an
engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science
(study of natural things) or branch of physics.
Petroski’s
focus in the book is the importance of engineering to policymaking, where it is
often overshadowed by science. Policy,
science, and engineering play off of each other a lot. Most of my career as an engineer has been
related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most
Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
The Ghost Map by science writer Steven Johnson is the story of the birth of epidemiology. Epidemiology is a medical science that uses statistics to help us understand how diseases operate in a population. Using various statistical and geographic tools, long before we had computers and GIS, physician John Snow demonstrated that cholera, once a recurring plague that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in some outbreaks, was a waterborne disease. This understanding, initially met with much skepticism, allowed officials to intervene to prevent the spread of the disease. For those who say of their math classes, “I’ll never us this,” here is a case where math (and science and policy) were used to make a great difference.
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas
Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
It is not much publicized today that the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806 had a partly scientific mission. Captains Lewis and Clark were charges with bringing back samples of the flora, fauna, and culture of the western territories. It was also hoped that they would find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean. In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes about the scientific mission as well as the policy, diplomacy, and commercial hopes the expedition carried.
Of course,
what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition is that it was a
great adventure. There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful
adventurers and explorers.
Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our
Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson
A list like this deserves something strange, creepy, and more fun than you care to admit. Right now, thousands of very young future STEM workers are catching bugs and snakes, breaking their toys to see what is inside, or staring into space with a weird expression of vacancy and concentration.
Jan
Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a morbid
book. It is sometimes humorous, especially in
consideration of topic. From a STEM
point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over time. The fears and activities of our forefathers
may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of what they
knew. Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the
book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it
reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility. Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.
If you’re looking
for something for a younger student, check out this post→ from Joanne
Loves Science or these
recommendations→ from STEM
Friday. By the way, I also write about
engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.
This review of STEM books appears courtesy of Keenan’s Book Reviews.
Will the Missouri River be the Next Colorado River?
The Bureau
of Reclamation and the seven states that are part of the Colorado
River Compact (Arizona, California,
Colorado,
Nevada, New Mexico,
Utah, and Wyoming)
announced a proposal for a pipeline to carry water
from the Missouri
River to the western states. The very preliminary proposal suggests a
pipeline beginning near Leavenworth, Kansas, to
Denver, Colorado. It would take 30 year
to build at a price of more than $11 billion, not to mention the energy
bills for pumping the water and the constant operational and maintenance costs.
Infrastructure Watch
does not abound with opinions as much as do some other blogs, but since we are
based in Missouri,
you would be right to guess we have an opinion on this. The states and communities along the Missouri
River have enough water
resources problems of their own.
They’ve already been battling over use of the river, and the aquifers
that have made the Midwest a great producer of grain
are already showing signs of overuse. If
we’re teetering on the edge of a water crisis, we don’t have the resources to
bail out the West. Because the lower Mississippi
River gets a significant amount of flow from the Missouri River, those
states may have a few things to say about it, too.
We don’t mind seeing the west grow.
We just don’t want to be the Owens Valley to their Los Angeles. If the Bureau of Reclamation has the vision
to imagine a spectacular pipeline, maybe they should envision the problems it
will cause and its eventual failure. We
need to get real about the water we have, when and where we have it, wherever
we are.
Related posts and articles
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
111th Congress Wrapping Up
Congress Wants Noisier Hybrids
Congress has passed the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010 (S. 841). The bill requires the Secretary of Transportation to issue rules that would require hybrid and electric cars to create enough noise to alert blind pedestrians of their presence. The bill must be signed by the president to become law.
Bill Introduced to Extend Hours of Service Rules to Yardmaster Employees
Outgoing Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar introduced the Railroad Hours of Service Act of 2010 (H.R. 6519). The act would extend hours of service rules for railroad employees to yardmaster employees.
House Votes to Reauthorize Transportation Program for One Year
Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution that would authorize continued spending on transportation programs at the current level through the end of the fiscal year. It will be up to the incoming Congress to work out a new transportation bill.
Related posts and articles
Bill Watch—111th Congress
Congress has passed the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010 (S. 841). The bill requires the Secretary of Transportation to issue rules that would require hybrid and electric cars to create enough noise to alert blind pedestrians of their presence. The bill must be signed by the president to become law.
Bill Introduced to Extend Hours of Service Rules to Yardmaster Employees
Outgoing Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar introduced the Railroad Hours of Service Act of 2010 (H.R. 6519). The act would extend hours of service rules for railroad employees to yardmaster employees.
House Votes to Reauthorize Transportation Program for One Year
Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution that would authorize continued spending on transportation programs at the current level through the end of the fiscal year. It will be up to the incoming Congress to work out a new transportation bill.
Related posts and articles
Bill Watch—111th Congress
Micah to Step Down from T&I Chair
Rep. John Micah (FL) will be stepping
down from the chairmanship of the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee due to term limits set by House rules. He has proposed that Rep. Bill Shuster (PA) should succeed
him.
Related post and articles
Recovery Act Review
Economic Impacts of ARRA
The Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) reports
quarterly on the estimated economic
impact of the American
Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA). In its report for the third quarter of 2012,
it estimated that ARRA funded more than 135, 000 jobs (full-time
equivalents, or FTEs). It expects 90 percent of ARRA’s budget
impacts will be realized by the end of the year. It projects that ARRA will increase they
budget deficit
by $833 billion by 2019, up from its original estimate of $787 billion.
Cleanup Projects
Beginning with ARRA, DOE implemented a project
management approach that broke down projects into more manageable
pieces. GAO found that this practice may
have allowed the agency to classify projects in a way that may have allowed
them to avoid certain review processes.
In addition, inconsistencies in developing project scope, schedules and
targets, along with variability in documentation, makes it difficult to
accurately assess and compare project and program performance.
State and Local Management of ARRA
State
and local
governments had significant responsibilities in managing ARRA funds as
recipients. GAO reported findings related to
their review of state and local management.
Some of those findings include:
-The emphasis on obligating ARRA funds resulted
in delayed obligation of other funds.
-Recipient expertise effected the management of
ARRA funds. Particularly, state agencies
tended to have more success in managing their ARRA projects that local agencies
because of greater familiarity with federal requirements.
-Unclear guidance caused problems for various
projects.
-Internal controls of some recipients were not
adequate, at least at the start, for monitoring compliance with ARRA
requirements.
Related posts and articles
$1 of Highway Spending Creates $2 of Economic Activity
Economists
at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
studied the effects of unexpected grants
to states for Federal-Aid
Highways affected gross
state product (GSP, or the gross
domestic product (GDP) of a state). They found that an unexpected $1 increase in federal
highway
grants to a state resulted in a $2 increase in GSP. The economic effect was double the amount of
the grant. In the short term, effects on
GSP were even greater.
Skywalk Memorial Close to Fundraising Goal, Construction of New Design Anticipated
When I was an undergraduate
engineering
student
about 20 years ago, one of the events covered in the engineering ethics class I took
was the 1981
collapse
of the skywalk at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City,
Missouri. Even 31 years after the collapse, the 114
people who were killed are remembered.
A nonprofit foundation
was formed to create a memorial to the victims of the collapse. It is now only $150,000 from having enough to
start construction
of the memorial. It has also chosen a design.
Related posts and articles
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