Australia II: A Case Study in Engineering Ethics.

Australia II became the first foreign yacht to win the America's Cup in 1983. The boat had a revolutionary wing keel and a better underwater hull form. In official documents, Ben Lexcen is credited with the design. He is also listed as the sole inventor of the wing keel in a patent application submitted on February 5, 1982. However, as reported in New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, and Professional Boatbuilder, the wing keel was in fact designed by engineer Peter van Oossanen at the Netherlands Ship Model Basin in Wageningen, assisted by Dr. Joop Slooff at the National Aerospace Laboratory in Amsterdam. Based on telexes, letters, drawings, and other documents preserved in his personal archive, this paper presents van Oossanen's account of how the revolutionary wing keel was designed. This is followed by an ethical analysis by Martin Peterson, in which he applies the American NSPE and Dutch KIVI codes of ethics to the information provided by van Oossanen. The NSPE and KIVI codes give conflicting advice about the case, and it is not obvious which document is most relevant. This impasse is resolved by applying a method of applied ethics in which similarity-based reasoning is extended to cases that are not fully similar. The key idea, presented in Peterson's book The Ethics of Technology (Peterson, The ethics of technology: A geometric analysis of five moral principles, Oxford University Press, 2017), is to use moral paradigm cases as reference points for constructing a "moral map".

Mentorship for Transfer Student Success in STEM Research: Mentor Approaches and Reflections.

Mentorship has been widely recognized as an effective means to promote student learning and engagement in undergraduate research experiences. However, little work exists for understanding different mentors' perceived approaches to mentorship, including mentorship of students from backgrounds and educational trajectories not well represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Transfer students, in particular, face unique trajectories in their pursuit of research opportunities, yet few studies investigate how mentors describe their approaches to supporting these students. Using semistructured interviews, this study examines how mentors approach mentoring students from diverse backgrounds as research trainees, with an emphasis on transfer students. First, using phenomenography as an analytical approach, we identified four categories describing variations in how mentors reflected upon or accounted for the transfer student identity in their approaches. We find that research mentors vary in their understanding and exposure to the transfer student identity and may have preconceived notions of the transfer student experience. Second, we present vignettes to illustrate how mentors' approaches to the transfer student identity may relate or diverge from their general approaches to mentoring students from different backgrounds and identities. The emerging findings have implications for developing effective mentorship strategies and training mentors to support transfer students.

Lighting pathways to success in STEM: a virtual Laboratory Meeting Programme (LaMP) mutually benefits mentees and host laboratories.

Developing robust professional networks can help shape the trajectories of early career scientists. Yet, historical inequities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields make access to these networks highly variable across academic programmes, and senior academics often have little time for mentoring. Here, we illustrate the success of a virtual Laboratory Meeting Programme (LaMP). In this programme, we matched students (mentees) with a more experienced scientist (mentors) from a research group. The mentees then attended the mentors' laboratory meetings during the academic year with two laboratory meetings specifically dedicated to the mentee's professional development. Survey results indicate that mentees expanded their knowledge of the hidden curriculum as well as their professional network, while only requiring a few extra hours of their mentor's time over eight months. In addition, host laboratories benefitted from mentees sharing new perspectives and knowledge in laboratory meetings. Diversity of the mentees was significantly higher than the mentors, suggesting that the programme increased the participation of traditionally under-represented groups. Finally, we found that providing a stipend was very important to many mentees. We conclude that virtual LaMPs can be an inclusive and cost-effective way to foster trainee development and increase diversity within STEM fields with little additional time commitment.

Water, Wealth, and Engineering Wisdom: Shaping Tucumán's Agricultural Future, 1890-1910.

Focusing on Argentina's sugarcane province of Tucumán from 1870 to 1910, this article examines the processes of engineering professionalization in Argentina and its application to pressing environmental problems. Engineers were central to the processes through which elites in Latin America sought to attract foreign investment in agriculture, integrate their countries into the global economy, and provide expertise that enabled states to advance a techno-scientific imaginary based on liberal economic progress. Progressive bureaucrats and engineers, such as civil engineer Carlos Wauters, believed that they could use hydraulic infrastructure to transform Tucumán from an agricultural monoculture to a polyculture; others believed that infrastructure should be used to support a sugar monoculture. In exploring this issue, this article bridges the fields of engineering history, agricultural history, and environmental history. It also incorporates Latin America into global scholarship on the emergence and evolution of professional engineering.

Technological advances and challenges of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) application in road engineering-a bibliometric analysis from 2000 to 2022.

Reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is a valuable material that can be recycled and reused in road engineering to reduce environmental impact, resource utilization, and economic costs. However, the application of RAP in road engineering presents both opportunities and challenges. This study visually analyzes the knowledge background, research status, and latest knowledge structure of literature related to RAP using scientific metric methods such as VOSviewer and Citespace. The Web of Science (WoS) core collection database identified 2963 research publications from 2000 to 2022. Collaborative networks between highly cited references, journals, authors, academic institutions, countries, and funding organizations are analyzed in this study, along with a co-occurrence analysis of keywords for the RAP research publications. Results showed that the USA has long been a leader in RAP research, China surpassed the USA in annual publication output in 2019, increasing from 2 publications in 2002 to 177 publications in 2022, and has made significant investments in technological aspects. Chang'an University ranked first in total publication output (131 publications, 4.4%). Current major research themes include road performance, recycling technology, regeneration mechanisms, and the life cycle assessment of RAP. In addition, based on cluster analysis of keywords, text content analysis, and SWOT analysis, this study also discusses RAP's challenges and future development directions in road engineering. These findings provide scholars with valuable information to gain insight into technological advances and challenges in the field of RAP.

The Value of Support: STEM Intervention Programs Impact Student Persistence and Belonging.

In response to unwaveringly high attrition from STEM pathways, STEM Intervention Programs (SIPs) support STEM students in effort to increase retention. Using mixed methods (survey and focus groups), we studied students at one university who were either supported or unsupported by SIPs to understand how students may differ in experiences believed to contribute to STEM persistence. We evaluated: sense of belonging, scientific self-efficacy, scientific community values, scientific identity, and STEM involvement. The enrollment status of students two and a half years postsurvey was also tracked. SIP students reported significantly higher science identity and sense of belonging and were more involved in STEM-related activities than counterparts unsupported by SIPs. Differences in these measures were correlated with race/ethnicity, college generation status, and age. Notably, SIP students had higher odds of persisting in STEM than students not supported by SIPs. Focus group data provide additional meaning to the measured survey constructs and revealed nuanced qualitative differences between SIP and non-SIP student experiences. Overall, being involved in a SIP at our institution trends positively with theoretical models that explain STEM student persistence. SIPs have the potential to provide and/or facilitate meaningful and critical support, and students without those intentional supports may be left behind.

Placing engineering in the earthquake response and the survival chain.

Earthquakes injure millions and simultaneously disrupt the infrastructure to protect them. This perspective argues that the current post-disaster investigation paradigm is insufficient to protect communities' health effectively. We propose the Earthquake Survival Chain as a framework to change the current engineering focus on infrastructure to health. This framework highlights four converging research opportunities to advance understanding of earthquake injuries, search and rescue, patient mobilizations, and medical treatment. We offer an interdisciplinary research agenda in engineering and health sciences, including artificial intelligence and virtual reality, to protect health and life from earthquakes.

Electronic knowledge books (eK-Books) as a medium to capitalise on and transfer scientific, engineering, operational, technological and craft knowledge.

The capitalisation on and transfer of technological, engineering and scientific knowledge associated with empirical know-how is an important issue for the sustainability and development of manufacturing. Indeed, certain sectors of industry are facing the increasing ageing of the labour force, recruitment difficulties and high staff turnover, leading to a loss of knowledge and know-how. In a context of numerical and digital transition and the migration of processes to industry 4.0, one of major challenges manufacturers face today is their capacity to build intelligent platforms for acquiring, storing and transferring their know-how and knowledge. It is crucial to create new media and tools for staff training and development capable of capturing knowledge and reusing it to create a project history through expertise and data collection. This paper presents the methodology and guidelines for implementing electronic knowledge books (eK-Books), along with their uses. The eK-Book is a semantic web-based hypertext medium (channel) allowing stakeholders to capitalise on, structure and transfer knowledge by using concept maps, process maps, influence graphs, downloadable documents, web pages and hypermedia knowledge sheets. They are intended for engineers, expert or novice technicians, manufacturers, sector coordinators and plant managers, as well as trainers and learners. They are usable and manageable in all types of environments and with different levels of accessibility. This paper highlights (1) the transfer knowledge capacity of eK-Books and (2) their usability in two agri-food sectors namely (1) the cheese sector with protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI), and (2) the butchery and cold meat sectors.

Engineering History in Latin America: A Review of Spanish-Language Books.

This review essay examines five Spanish-language books published in Latin America on the emergence of engineering in the region. Focusing on a period from roughly 1850 to 1970, these works share themes of foreigners and foreign education, nation-state construction, and social conceptions of prestige. This research suggests that throughout Latin America foreign educators and models were prominent in early engineering programs and enterprises. However, many historians associate the growth of engineering, especially civil engineering, with increasing state consolidation and economic intervention. As social perceptions of the value of professional engineering changed, domestic engineers increasingly became important planners and mediators. Some engineers became state leaders. By contextualizing these works with other scholarship on the history of engineering, this review essay highlights new insights while suggesting the need for greater attention to gender, race, and labor; comparisons between developments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia; and more research on private-sector engineers.

Making Waves: Towards data-centric water engineering.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to transform many scientific disciplines, with the potential to significantly accelerate scientific discovery. This perspective calls for the development of data-centric water engineering to tackle water challenges in a changing world. Building on the historical evolution of water engineering from empirical and theoretical paradigms to the current computational paradigm, we argue that a fourth paradigm, i.e., data-centric water engineering, is emerging driven by recent AI advances. Here we define a new framework for data-centric water engineering in which data are transformed into knowledge and insight through a data pipeline powered by AI technologies. It is proposed that data-centric water engineering embraces three principles - data-first, integration and decision making. We envision that the development of data-centric water engineering needs an interdisciplinary research community, a shift in mindset and culture in the academia and water industry, and an ethical and risk framework to guide the development and application of AI. We hope this paper could inspire research and development that will accelerate the paradigm shift towards data-centric water engineering in the water sector and fundamentally transform the planning and management of water infrastructure.

Bibliometric analysis of global research trends on biomimetics, biomimicry, bionics, and bio-inspired concepts in civil engineering using the Scopus database.

This paper presents a bibliometrics analysis aimed at discerning global trends in research on 'biomimetics', 'biomimicry', 'bionics', and 'bio-inspired' concepts within civil engineering, using the Scopus database. This database facilitates the assessment of interrelationships and impacts of these concepts within the civil engineering domain. The findings demonstrate a consistent growth in publications related to these areas, indicative of increasing interest and impact within the civil engineering community. Influential authors and institutions have emerged, making significant contributions to the field. The United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom are recognised as leaders in research on these concepts in civil engineering. Notably, emerging countries such as China and India have also made considerable contributions. The integration of design principles inspired by nature into civil engineering holds the potential to drive sustainable and innovative solutions for various engineering challenges. The conducted bibliometrics analysis grants perspective on the current state of scientific research on biomimetics, biomimicry, bionics, and bio-inspired concepts in the civil engineering domain, offering data to predict the evolution of each concept in the coming years. Based on the findings of this research, 'biomimetics' replicates biological substances, 'biomimicry' directly imitates designs, and 'bionics' mimics biological functions, while 'bio-inspired' concepts offer innovative ideas beyond direct imitation. Each term incorporates distinct strategies, applications, and historical contexts, shaping innovation across the field of civil engineering.

Genome-wide analysis to uncover how Pocillopora acuta survives the challenging intertidal environment.

Characterisation of genomic variation among corals can help uncover variants underlying trait differences and contribute towards genotype prioritisation in coastal restoration projects. For example, there is growing interest in identifying resilient genotypes for transplantation, and to better understand the genetic processes that allow some individuals to survive in specific conditions better than others. The coral species Pocillopora acuta is known to survive in a wide range of habitats, from reefs artificial coastal defences, suggesting its potential use as a starter species for ecological engineering efforts involving coral transplantation onto intertidal seawalls. However, the intertidal section of coastal armour is a challenging environment for corals, with conditions during periods of emersion being particularly stressful. Here, we scanned the entire genome of P. acuta corals to identify the regions harbouring single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variations (CNVs) that separate intertidal colonies (n = 18) from those found in subtidal areas (n = 21). Findings revealed 74,391 high quality SNPs distributed across 386 regions of the P. acuta genome. While the majority of the detected SNPs were in non-coding regions, 12% were identified in exons (i.e. coding regions). Functional SNPs that were significantly associated with intertidal colonies were found in overrepresented genomic regions linked to cellular homeostasis, metabolism, and signalling processes, which may represent local environmental adaptation in the intertidal. Interestingly, regions that exhibited CNVs were also associated with metabolic and signalling processes, suggesting P. acuta corals living in the intertidal have a high capacity to perform biological functions critical for survival in extreme environments.

How syllabi relate to outcomes in higher education: A study of syllabi learner-centeredness and grade inequities in STEM.

Fostering equity in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs can be accomplished by incorporating learner-centered pedagogies, resulting in the closing of opportunity gaps (defined here as the difference in grades earned by minoritized and non-minoritized students). We assessed STEM courses that exhibit small and large opportunity gaps at a minority-serving, research-intensive university, and evaluated the degree to which their syllabi are learner-centered, according to a previously validated rubric. We specifically chose syllabi as they are often the first interaction students have with a course, establish expectations for course policies and practices, and serve as a proxy for the course environment. We found STEM courses with more learner-centered syllabi had smaller opportunity gaps. The syllabus rubric factor that most correlated with smaller gaps was Power and Control, which reflects Student's Role, Outside Resources, and Syllabus Focus. This work highlights the importance of course syllabi as a tool for instructors to create more inclusive classroom environments.

Quality of Answers of Generative Large Language Models Versus Peer Users for Interpreting Laboratory Test Results for Lay Patients: Evaluation Study.

BACKGROUND: Although patients have easy access to their electronic health records and laboratory test result data through patient portals, laboratory test results are often confusing and hard to understand. Many patients turn to web-based forums or question-and-answer (Q&A) sites to seek advice from their peers. The quality of answers from social Q&A sites on health-related questions varies significantly, and not all responses are accurate or reliable. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have opened a promising avenue for patients to have their questions answered. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to assess the feasibility of using LLMs to generate relevant, accurate, helpful, and unharmful responses to laboratory test-related questions asked by patients and identify potential issues that can be mitigated using augmentation approaches. METHODS: We collected laboratory test result-related Q&A data from Yahoo! Answers and selected 53 Q&A pairs for this study. Using the LangChain framework and ChatGPT web portal, we generated responses to the 53 questions from 5 LLMs: GPT-4, GPT-3.5, LLaMA 2, MedAlpaca, and ORCA_mini. We assessed the similarity of their answers using standard Q&A similarity-based evaluation metrics, including Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation, Bilingual Evaluation Understudy, Metric for Evaluation of Translation With Explicit Ordering, and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers Score. We used an LLM-based evaluator to judge whether a target model had higher quality in terms of relevance, correctness, helpfulness, and safety than the baseline model. We performed a manual evaluation with medical experts for all the responses to 7 selected questions on the same 4 aspects. RESULTS: Regarding the similarity of the responses from 4 LLMs; the GPT-4 output was used as the reference answer, the responses from GPT-3.5 were the most similar, followed by those from LLaMA 2, ORCA_mini, and MedAlpaca. Human answers from Yahoo data were scored the lowest and, thus, as the least similar to GPT-4-generated answers. The results of the win rate and medical expert evaluation both showed that GPT-4's responses achieved better scores than all the other LLM responses and human responses on all 4 aspects (relevance, correctness, helpfulness, and safety). LLM responses occasionally also suffered from lack of interpretation in one's medical context, incorrect statements, and lack of references. CONCLUSIONS: By evaluating LLMs in generating responses to patients' laboratory test result-related questions, we found that, compared to other 4 LLMs and human answers from a Q&A website, GPT-4's responses were more accurate, helpful, relevant, and safer. There were cases in which GPT-4 responses were inaccurate and not individualized. We identified a number of ways to improve the quality of LLM responses, including prompt engineering, prompt augmentation, retrieval-augmented generation, and response evaluation.

The relations between growth mindset, motivational beliefs, and career interest in math intensive fields in informal STEM youth programs.

Past research has shown that growth mindset and motivational beliefs have an important role in math and science career interest in adolescence. Drawing on situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT), this study extends these findings by investigating the role of parental motivational beliefs (e.g., expectancy beliefs, utility values) and parent growth mindset in math on adolescent career interest in math-intensive fields (e.g., mathematics, computer science, statistics, and engineering; MCSE) through adolescent motivational beliefs in math. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model using data from 290 adolescents (201 girls, 69.3%; Mage = 15.20), who participate in informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) youth programs, and their parents (162 parents, 87.7% female) in the United Kingdom and the United States. As hypothesized, adolescent expectancy beliefs, utility values, and growth mindset in math had a significant direct effect on MCSE career interest. Further, there was a significant indirect effect of parental expectancy beliefs in math on MCSE career interest through adolescents' expectancy beliefs. Similarly, there was a significant indirect effect from parental utility values in math to MCSE career interest through adolescents' utility values. The findings suggest that parents' math motivational beliefs play a critical role in adolescent math motivational beliefs and their career interest in math-intensive fields.

Engineering and environmental assessment of soilbag-based slope stabilisation for sustainable landslide mitigation in mountainous area.

Changes in land use significantly impact landslide occurrence, particularly in mountainous areas in northern Thailand, where human activities such as urbanization, deforestation, and slope modifications alter natural slope angles, increasing susceptibility to landslides. To address this issue, an appropriate method using soilbags has been widely used for slope stabilisation in northern Thailand, but their effectiveness and sustainability require assessment. This research highlights the need to evaluate the stability of the soilbag-based method. In this study, a case study was conducted in northern Thailand, focusing on an area characterised by high-risk landslide potential. This research focuses on numerical evaluation the slope stability of soilbag-reinforced structures and discusses environmental sustainability. The study includes site investigations using an unmanned aerial photogrammetric survey for slope geometry evaluation and employing the microtremor survey technique for subsurface investigation. Soil and soilbag material parameters are obtained from existing literatures. Modelling incorporates hydrological data, slope geometry, subsurface conditions, and material parameters. Afterwards, the pore-water pressure results and safety factors are analysed. Finally, the sustainability of soilbags is discussed based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The results demonstrate that soilbags effectively mitigate pore-water pressures, improve stability, and align with several SDGs objectives. This study enhances understanding of soilbags in slope stabilisation and introduces a sustainable landslide mitigation approach for landslide-prone regions.

Program Evaluation's Path to Greater Policy Relevance: Learning From Rossi's Iron Laws.

In a 1987 article, Peter R. Rossi promulgated "The Iron Law of Evaluation and Other Metallic Rules." The Metallic Laws were meant as an informal (and humorous) overstatement of the weakness of contemporary evaluations of social programs. Rossi' s underlying worry was not so much about the state of evaluation technology in the abstract, but, rather, in its inability to advance our broad understanding of social problems and what to do about them---in other words, to make evaluation policy relevant. Rossi attributed the continuing failure to develop successful "large-scale social programs" to the failure to build a strong knowledge base for this kind of "social engineering." The qualities of studies that enable such accumulated learning are variously labeled "external validity," "generalizability," "applicability," or "transferability." This Special Issue includes five papers that seek to explore and apply this understanding.

Problem choice and decision trees in science and engineering.

Scientists and engineers often spend days choosing a problem and years solving it. This imbalance limits impact. Here, we offer a framework for problem choice: prompts for ideation, guidelines for evaluating impact and likelihood of success, the importance of fixing one parameter at a time, and opportunities afforded by failure.