The Environmental Protection Agency will take a tougher stance on carbon and methane emissions regardless of Congress' actions, said the agency's administrator, Michael Regan. The American Petroleum Institute and US Chamber of Commerce have both pushed for EPA methane standards, and the agency will deliver "a very aggressive standard," Regan said.
More than 600 major and thousands of lesser updates form part of newly passed City Council improvements for New York City's Construction Codes. The latest in a series of periodic changes apply the most demanding international standards as well as strict regulations unique to New York.
The customer and member needs of standards development organizations have changed in recent years, and an organization's IT infrastructure must keep up in order to serve them adequately.
Investigations into the February fuel failure and resultant alert at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research identified seven root causes, including inadequate operator training and incomplete written procedures, according to documents submitted by the NIST to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NIST will take 18 corrective actions to prevent a recurrence and is seeking NRC permission to restart the reactor.
Air quality index numbers from wildfires have been so high in parts of the West that some school operations have been disrupted, and the Environmental Protection Agency and other groups released guidelines on fine particulate matter for schools for the first time in June. Geography professor Colleen Reid of the University of Colorado Boulder is participating in a project to put air sensors in homes and Denver-area schools to determine when it is safe to hold classes.
Engineers with New York's Thruway Authority will work with the Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance on a pilot project that will investigate the use of drones to assist highway bridge inspections. The project could lead to more extensive use of drones for tasks such as mapping and surveying, as well as tracking inventory and infrastructure.
Urban Movement Labs, a nonprofit that was spun out from the Los Angeles mayor's office, is developing air taxi standards for the city. The nonprofit aims to help companies integrate urban air mobility within the existing transportation infrastructure and navigate regulations concerning noise, zoning and accessibility.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it has called on airports to curtail their use of firefighting foam containing PFAS, also referred to as "forever chemicals." The FAA has been evaluating potential alternative products that do not contain PFAS and "expects a replacement product to be identified and eventually adopted."
NASA plans to launch a mission next month to crash into the smaller of two asteroids to test whether the impact alters the course of the larger asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California.
Sopheara Kou, a certified prosthetic orthotist with Veterans Affairs in Long Beach, Calif., is developing a prosthetic leg designed for running with the help of 3D printing. Kou, a veteran of the Marine Corps, said 3D printing "helps our veterans in ways we could not imagine before."
ASTM International's cannabis committee (D37) has launched a new subcommittee aimed at supporting the exchange of cannabis information and knowledge. The committee's executive subcommittee also provided public comment at the request of the US Senate.
