Compare and contrast the accumulation of engineering ethical issues Essay

Compare and contrast the accumulation of engineering ethical issues leading to the Katrina Hurricane response versus the TVA's Kingston ash spill - Essay Example ganization’s integrity by assisting individuals conform to the professional norms, avoid misdeeds and mistakes (such as nepotism and corruption) that go against public trust. Deontological ethics also ensure that the public officials within the constitutional republic are accountable to people (Adams and Balfour 4). A good example is the failure of the levees after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans (Schwester 348). There are people who argue that the city of New Orleans should not have been located in such vulnerable environment. New Orleans is located below-sea level which is a factor that could have contributed to the vulnerability of New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. The important factor is perhaps the New Orleans system of floodwalls and levees, which were built in the 1920s and in the 1930s. The Corps of Engineers and the levee districts did not maintain the levees and the floodwalls adequately. Furthermore, the soil structure initial assessment indicates that the system was built on substandard soil. This means that the levees could be overtopped by Category 3 storm. Multiple breaches in a number of waterways and from Lake Pontchartrain offered substantial evidence of inadequate risk assessment and failure to sufficiently protect the waterways (Adams and Balfour 8). The engineering ethical issues in regard to the Hurricane Katrina have accumulated since the construction of the floodwalls and levees during the 1920s and 1930s. Due to the economic significance of New Orleans, Morgan City, and the Baton Rouge, a system of levees was constructed in the past years to keep the river in its current bed and also to manage, or control frequent flooding. To make matters worse, flooding can result due to the Mississippi River large spring flows, and from storms blowing from the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, the operators and designers of a New Orleans flood control system are faced with sophisticated design conditions (Christian 6). In the early 20th century, pumping

Antimatter Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Antimatter - Essay Example For the electron, for instance, there should be an "antielectron" identical in every way but with a positive electric charge. In his Nobel Lecture, Dirac speculated on the existence of a completely new Universe made out of antimatter! (The History of antimatter, 2001) In 1932 Carl Anderson, a young professor at the California Institute of Technology, while studying showers of cosmic particles in a cloud chamber discovered antielectron, He called the antielectron a "positron", for its positive charge. After almost 25 years in the year 1955, antiprotons were discovered followed by antineutrons in 1959. In 1965, a unique machine at CERN (Conseil Europen pour la Recherche Nuclaire), a European organization for nuclear research called Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) was used to successfully produce antihydrogen atom, which is a real a real antimatter atom. The idea behind this is to trap these antihydrogen atoms by first slowing them down and then carry out accurate comparisons of properties of hydrogen and antihydrogen particles. "Matter and antimatter are perfect opposites. So perfect, in fact, that when the meet they annihilate leaving behind a flash of pure energy. Nothing else remains; antimatter annihilation is the ultimate clean source of energy. It is the perfect conversion of mass (m) into energy (E) according to Einstein's famous prescription E= mc2, where c is the speed of light. The problem is, however, that antimatter cannot simply be harvested or mined. It has to be made, and making it requires vastly more energy than annihilating it produces. All the antimatter produced at CERN in a year would provide barely enough energy to power a light bulb for a few seconds." (Gordon Fraser) Antimatter Applications Antimatter may be the stuff of science fiction but at laboratories like CERN it is a commonplace tool for research. In hospitals and industry too, antimatter is in everyday use for diagnosis. Positron Emission Tomography, PET, for example relies on antimatter. It works by attaching radioactive atoms that emit positrons - anti-electrons - to biological tracer molecules that find their way to specific areas of the body. When the radioactive atoms decay the positrons they emit immediately annihilate with electrons and the resulting flash of energy appears in the form of two gamma-rays of equal energy. These escape from the body back-to-back and are detected, allowing doctors to follow what happens to the biological tracer molecules and thus learn valuable information about the workings of the body. (Antimatter Decelerator, 2008). Negative and Positive sides of Antimatter The 1980s US Strategic Defense Initiative program (better known as 'Star Wars') included several projects which looked at the possibility of using antimatter as rocket fuel or to drive space-borne weapons platforms. (Gordon Fraser) Antimatter, converting all its mass into energy, is the ultimate fuel. However first the antimatter would have to be manufactured - there is no 'mine' of antimatter. (Gordon Fraser) Antimatter is difficult to produce - all the antiprotons produced at CERN during one year would supply enough energy to light a 100 watt electric bulb for three seconds! (Gordon