Research ethics

An interesting article came to my notice the other day by David Resnick with the title What is ethics in research and why it is important?  One of the things that is popping up increasingly frequency in research applications is a section on ethics, so I was delighted to see this article.

David is a bioethicist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.   He gives a number of interesting case studies and tackles a number of thorny issues such as who should be included as an author on a research paper.   An entertaining and enlightening short article.  Access the article here. (Nick Gray)

Septic Tank Design in the United States

My undergraduates are looking at small scale treatment systems this week and here is a very interesting video looking at the design of  aUS septic tank system which gives us an interesting comparison with our own systems here in Ireland.

US Water Infrastructure to be Upgraded

US EPA has announced a new national policy to deal with its aging water infrastructure.  The policy intends to upgrade systems using a range of sustainable options that will be able to deal with the potential storm water issues caused by climate change as well replacing aging systems. Link New York alone has  12,000 km of sewer most now fairly old and either overloaded or in need of replacement. Recently a plan was unveiled to spent $1.5 billion on upgrading their sewerage system to reduce CSOs dumping in excess of 110 billion litres of contaminated water each year into New York surface waters. This upgrade will include a range of sustainable urban drainage options from  green roofs to porous pavements to reduce the volume of surface water going to sewer.