Safety is the key consideration in the civil engineer industry's new Dry Dock Standard, ASCE/COPRI 77-22. It establishes a commercial standard, giving dry dock owners an alternative to obtaining certifications from third-party engineers that typically focus more on capacity.

The American Petroleum Institute is concerned by the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed tailpipe emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles and is calling for amendments that enable emission reductions without compromising access to affordable and reliable transportation and freight options. The proposal overlooks technological and infrastructural challenges and could be detrimental to energy security, the group argued in comments submitted to the EPA.

The US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service has launched an initiative called the Salmonella Grand Challenge, intended to unite scientists and specialists to research the incidence of Salmonella contamination and reduce its associated human illness. The researchers will utilize machine learning to develop more accurate predictive tools and create better monitoring tools for the meat and poultry industry, with the hope that they can help reduce salmonellosis cases by 25% by 2030.

OSHA has proposed a rule to protect workers from extreme heat indoors and outdoors, but several states have petitioned OSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard that kicks in when the heat index hits 80 degrees. "Heat exposure can happen indoors or outdoors and can occur during any season if the conditions are right, not only during heat waves," OSHA health scientist Pamela Barclay says.

The Gulf Cooperation Council's first bridge with a GFRP deck will be in a new industrial city under construction Saudi Arabia. The GFRP bars, which are expected to help the bridge achieve LEED Silver certification, have a tensile modulus of elasticity of 40 GPa and a tensile strength of 550 MPa.

Researchers have made a breakthrough in concrete technology that could drastically cut the lifetime CO2 emissions of concrete by substituting some cement with burnt blue clay, a plentiful natural resource, in addition to demonstrating that standard steel reinforcement can be replaced with aluminum when burnt clay is used, cutting the need for maintenance. Researchers were awarded a SINTEF Prize for Research Excellence for the technology, which has been used in construction projects in Norway, including a road bridge and a museum entrance.

The Department of Public Works in Kent County, Mich., is improving its recycling efficiency with the help of three robots from AMP Robotics financed by the state. The robots are equipped with artificial intelligence to quickly sort materials and identify high-value recyclables.

The next time a colleague or boss says something to you that hits you the wrong way, you can muster up compassion for them by imagining that their words are coming from someone you care deeply for like a child, spouse or sibling, writes Lisa Kohn, principal with Chatsworth Consulting Group. "[S]imply picture someone whom you can easily hear things from saying that thing that's hard for you to hear," writes Kohn.

Papers are invited for ASTM's Third Symposium on Respirable Crystalline Silica and Other Minerals and Metals, to be held Oct. 10 to 11, 2024, in Orlando, Fla. The event is sponsored by the air quality committee (D22) and will be held in conjunction with the committee's standards development meetings.