Browsing by Author "Roy, Siddhartha"

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    Citizen Science During the Flint, Michigan Federal Water Emergency: Ethical Dilemmas and Lessons Learned
    Roy, Siddhartha; Edwards, Marc A. (Ubiquity Press, 2019-03-08)
    A citizen science collaboration between Flint residents, the Virginia Tech “Flint Water Study” team, and others helped to uncover the Flint Lead-in-Drinking Water Crisis and a community-wide outbreak of Legionella. The resulting Federal Emergency declaration in January 2016 resulted in more than $600 million in relief funding, an acknowledged case of environmental injustice, and resignations/indictments of some public officials. But after responsible government entities apologized and attempted to make amends and help with the recovery, some “citizen scientists” began making public statements that were in direct conflict with public health messaging of scientific authorities. A general state of science anarchy resulted, which created further distrust and confusion. Some practices employed were consistent with a concept of “citizen engineering,” which aims to “undermine engineering [and science] expertise” in the name of “democratizing” science. “Citizen Engineers” view concepts of scientific rigor and objectivity as justification for abuse of power by authorities and scientists, and they embrace biases and conflicts of interest that scientists aspire to guard against. While there are ethical guidelines for professional scientists on research misconduct, no such framework exists for policing instances of unethical behavior by citizen scientists. Possible abuses of citizen science documented in Flint explored in this case study include: 1) collection of non-representative data that created unjustified fear among residents about the safety of water used for bathing and showering, 2) perceived financial conflicts of interest, and 3) falsification of data to obtain relief resources, support lawsuits, gain media attention, or support erroneous scientific conclusions. We also report the journey of an aspiring citizen scientist who openly acknowledged mistakes, made the “right” decision in relation to handling an ethical dilemma, and who was then publicly attacked for doing so. This experience highlights challenges to the practice of citizen science, especially during high profile emergency interventions and disasters involving environmental injustice.
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    Efficacy of corrosion control and pipe replacement in reducing citywide lead exposure during the Flint, MI water system recovery
    Roy, Siddhartha; Edwards, Marc A. (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2020-08-25)
    Flint biosolids monitoring data demonstrate a sustained decline in total lead release to potable water from plumbing since the 2014–2015 Flint Water Crisis (FWC), due to enhanced corrosion control treatment (3 mg L−1 orthophosphate as PO4) and removing of ∼80% of lead and galvanized iron service lines through early 2020. The official 90th percentile water lead levels, which have now met the federal Lead and Copper Rule threshold of 15 μg L−1 for the last four years, are in agreement with those predicted by a previously established biosolids regression model. There is also no longer a correlation between the percentage of children under 6 years of age with blood lead ≥ 5 μg dL−1 and biosolids lead mass in the 44 months post-FWC (Nov 2015–Jun 2019), nor are there continued correlations between plumbing-related metals in the biosolids, with the exception of Cu:Zn found in brass alloys that remain installed in homes. After Flint achieves 100% replacement of lead and galvanized service line pipes, a biosolids data analysis predicts that the remaining sources of waterborne lead including leaded brass, lead solder and legacy lead in pipe scale, will still release about 16–28% of the pre-FWC lead mass to potable water. The efficacy of enhanced corrosion control and replacement of service lines that contain lead is, therefore, on the order of 72–84% effective at reducing citywide lead exposure, yet some significant water lead sources will still remain even after pipe replacement is complete.
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    Evaluating Water Lead Levels During the Flint Water Crisis
    Pieper, Kelsey J.; Martin, Rebekah L.; Tang, Min; Walters, LeeAnne; Parks, Jeffrey L.; Roy, Siddhartha; Devine, Christina; Edwards, Marc A. (ACS, 2018-06-22)
    In April 2014, the drinking water source in Flint, Michigan was switched from Lake Huron water with phosphate inhibitors to Flint River water without corrosion inhibitors. The absence of corrosion control and use of a more corrosive source increased lead leaching from plumbing. Our city-wide citizen science water lead results contradicted official claims that there was no problem– our 90th percentile was 26.8 μg/L, which was almost double the Lead and Copper Rule action level of 15 μg/L. Back calculations of a LCR sampling pool with 50% lead pipes indicated an estimated 90th percentile lead value of 31.7 μg/L (±4.3 μg/L). Four subsequent sampling efforts were conducted to track reductions in water lead after the switch back to Lake Huron water and enhanced corrosion control. The incidence of water lead varied by service line material. Between August 2015 and November 2016, median water lead reduced from 3.0 to <1 μg/L for homes with copper service lines, 7.2–1.9 μg/L with galvanized service lines, and 9.9–2.3 μg/L with lead service lines. As of summer 2017, our 90th percentile of 7.9 μg/L no longer differed from official results, which indicated Flint’s water lead levels were below the action level.
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    The Flint Water Crisis: Ut Prosim in Action
    Roy, Siddhartha (Virginia Tech, 2017-04-26)
    Siddhartha Roy's presentation to the 2017 McComas Staff Leadership Seminar
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    For the Public Good: Research Impact and the Promise of Open Access
    DePauw, Karen P.; Seyam, Mohammed; Roy, Siddhartha; Abbas, Montasir M.; Hole, Brian; Potter, Peter J. (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2016-10-24)
    As a land-grant institution, Virginia Tech is committed to research that meaningfully engages with the vital concerns of our day such as feeding, building, and empowering a healthy world. How does Virginia Tech’s commitment to engagement fit with the Open Access vision for unrestricted online access to scholarly research? Have OA journals, public repositories, and federal mandates simply made a researcher’s life more complicated or could OA be the key to unlocking research impact on a global scale? And what are the implications for tenure and promotion? Join us for a public forum devoted to these questions and more on Monday, October 24, at 6:30 pm in Torgersen 1100. We expect a lively discussion featuring panelists from the Virginia Tech community and ample opportunity for audience Q&A. Montasir (“Monty”) Abbas is Associate Professor in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he also serves as Coordinator of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Systems Engineering Program. His interests are in real-time traffic control, traffic flow theory, driver behavior, ITS, transportation modeling and safety, artificial intelligence and systems optimization. Abbas currently serves as President of VT’s Faculty Senate. Karen DePauw is Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education at Virginia Tech. An internationally recognized scholar in the fields of adapted physical activity, disability sport and disability studies, she holds academic appointments in the Departments of Sociology and Human Nutrition, Foods & Exercise. As an academic administrator, she has held key leadership roles in graduate education including serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools (2010) and Chair of the GRE Board (2013-2014). Brian Hole is founder and CEO of Ubiquity Press, a researcher-focused publishing company that specializes in open access academic journals and open data. Prior to that, he managed the British Library’s LIFE3 project on costing digital preservation, and the DryadUK project, which developed a sustainable framework for integrating Open Data archiving into scientific publisher work flows. When not engaged in his publishing work, Hole is working on a part-time PhD at University College London, focusing on public archaeology in India, specifically at issues of community engagement and utilization of cultural heritage. Peter Potter is Director, Publishing Strategy, at Virginia Tech. In this role he is charged with assessing the research and scholarly environments at VT in order to guide the University Libraries’ long-term planning in the area of publishing services. A historian by training (B.A. Virginia Tech; M.A. University of Virginia), Potter has devoting his professional career to scholarly publishing, most recently serving as editor in chief at Cornell University Press. Siddhartha Roy is doctoral student and graduate researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He works with Dr. Marc Edwards researching failure mechanisms in potable water infrastructure and is a member of the Virginia Tech Research Team that has been working to resolve the water quality issues in Flint, Michigan. Mohammed Seyam is a doctoral student in Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He earned an undergraduate degree in information systems from Mansoura University and a master’s degree in information systems from Cairo University, both in Egypt. Among his many activities on campus he served as the graduate student representative on the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors during the 2015-16 academic year. A vocal advocate of OA, he traveled to Washington to take part in OpenCon 2014, a conference for researchers on open access, open data, and open educational resources."
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    Interplay of Water Chemistry and Entrained Particulates in Erosion Corrosion of Copper and Nonleaded Alloys in Potable Water Systems
    Roy, Siddhartha (Virginia Tech, 2018-03-26)
    Erosion corrosion of plumbing materials in domestic water systems is a complex phenomenon driven by water quality, hydrodynamic and electrochemical factors. Erosion corrosion accounts for over a third of copper hot water system failures in the U.S., hundreds of millions in damage, and may be expected to increase with newer Legionella control strategies including increased use of water recirculation and high temperatures. Additionally, some nonleaded alloys introduced after the passage of a new federal law restricting lead content in plumbing, have been anecdotally implicated as failing prematurely from erosion corrosion compared to traditional alloys. This dissertation includes 1) a critical review of the literature, 2) investigation of a recent rapid erosion corrosion failure in a large building plumbing system, 3) replication of this phenomena in copper and nonleaded brass in laboratory studies, and 4) evaluation of 12 nonleaded alloys against conventional leaded brass. Current plumbing codes and guidelines to prevent erosion corrosion were found to be widely inconsistent and lacking scientific evidence. Large-scale recirculating hot water pipe-loop experiments demonstrated that an aggressive hard water with entrained aragonite (CaCO3) particles could cause fully penetrative failures (i.e., leaks) in brand new copper pipe and nonleaded brass fittings in just 3-49 days. This represents the first time rapid erosion corrosion failures have ever been replicated in the laboratory under conditions similar to those encountered in practice. The entrained particulates dramatically accelerated attack on metals, especially at pipe bends. In general, lowering pH, increasing flow velocity, increasing temperatures, entrainment of particles (of bigger sizes), and addition of chlorine disinfectant increased erosion corrosion rates. These results scientifically proved that hard waters are not inherently less aggressive than soft water, and in fact if CaCO3 solids form they can be much more aggressive. Finally, cavitation and erosion corrosion resistance of 12 nonleaded alloys was evaluated against leaded brass; stainless steels demonstrated superior performance, silicon brass had the greatest susceptibility and remaining alloys were in the middle. This performance data can aid decision making regarding choice of alloys for various water applications. Our work over the years, including involvement in the Flint Water Crisis, demonstrated that practicing trustworthy science as a public good requires commitment to scientific rigor, truth-seeking, managing conflicts of interest, and comprehensible evidence-based science communication. Critical problems in 21st century public science were highlighted including perverse incentives, misconduct, postmodernist "science anarchist" thought, and ineffectiveness of U.S. water utilities in communicating tap water safety to the American public.
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    Lead release to potable water during the Flint, Michigan water crisis as revealed by routine biosolids monitoring data
    Roy, Siddhartha; Tang, Min; Edwards, Marc A. (2019-09-01)
    Routine biosolids monitoring data provides an independent and comprehensive means to estimate water lead release pre-, during and post-Flint Water Crisis (FWC). The mass of potable plumbing-related metals ( i.e., lead, cadmium, copper, nickel and zinc) in sewage biosolids strongly correlated with one another during the FWC (p < 0.05). A simple parametric regression model based on 90th percentile potable water lead measurements (WLL90) from five city-wide citizen science sampling efforts August 2015-August 2017 was strongly correlated to corresponding monthly lead mass in biosolids [Biosolids-Pb (kg) = 0.483 x WLL90 (mu g/L) + 1.79: R-2 = 0.86, p < 0.05]. Although total biosolids lead increased just 14% during the 18 months of the FWC versus the comparable time pre-FWC, 76% of that increase occurred in July -September 2014, and the corresponding percentage of Flint children under 6 years with elevated blood lead >= 5 mu g/dL (i.e., %EBL5) doubling from 3.45% to 6.61% in those same three months versus 2013 (p < 0.05). %EBL5 was not statistically higher during the remaining months of the FWC compared to preFWC or post-FWC. As expected, lead in biosolids during the FWC, when orthophosphate was not added, was moderately correlated with water temperature (R-2 = 0.30, p < 0.05), but not at other times pre- and post-FWC when orthophosphate was present. Tripling the orthophosphate dose post-FWC versus pre-FWC and some lead pipe removal, decreased lead in biosolids (and %EBLS) to historic lows (2016-2017 vs. 2012-2013; p < 0.05), supporting the effectiveness of these public health interventions in reducing childhood water lead exposure. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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    NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia
    Roy, Siddhartha; Edwards, Marc A. (Springer Nature, 2023-04-07)
    There is increased concern about perverse incentives, quantitative performance metrics, and hyper-competition for funding and faculty positions in US academia. Recipients of the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (n = 244) from Civil and Environmental Engineering (45.5%) and Computer Science and Engineering (54.5%) were anonymously surveyed to create a baseline snapshot of their perceptions, behaviors and experiences. NSF Fellows ranked scientific advancement as the top metric for evaluating academics followed by publishing in high-impact journals, social impact of research, and publication/citation counts. The self-reported rate of academic cheating was 16.7% and of research misconduct was 3.7%. Thirty-one percent of fellows reported direct knowledge of graduate peers cheating, and 11.9% had knowledge of research misconduct by colleagues. Only 30.7% said they would report suspected misconduct. A majority of fellows (55.3%) felt that mandatory ethics trainings left them unprepared for dealing with ethical issues. Fellows stated academic freedom, flexible schedules and opportunity to mentor students were the most positive aspects of academia, whereas pressures for funding, publication, and tenure were cited as the most negative aspects. These data may be useful in considering how to better prepare STEM graduate trainees for academic careers.
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    Open Access Forum 2020: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Educational Resources, and Open Data
    Briganti, Jonathan; DePauw, Karen P.; McNabb, Kayla B.; Miles, Rachel A.; Mueller, Derek; Roy, Siddhartha; Sridhar, Venkataramana (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2020-10-19)
    Join faculty presenters from around the university, University Libraries faculty, and the Preparing the Future Professoriate graduate class in a robust discussion about nuances, similarities and differences in the "opens." This event begins with brief discussions of open access (OA), open educational resources (OER), and open data before situating this conversation within open access trends in the U.S., Europe, and at Virginia Tech. Presenters and panelists include Jonathan Briganti (University Libraries), Karen DePauw, (Graduate School), Kayla McNabb (University Libraries), Rachel Miles (University Libraries), Derek Mueller (English), Siddartha Roy (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Venkat "Sri" Sridhar (Biological Systems Engineering).