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Smarter Cities

Illuminating Discovery: Lighting Roads Without Electricitiy

The project of smart highways: interactive and sustainable
The project of smart highways: interactive and sustainable
Itay Lahat

TEL AVIV — Vincent van Gogh's famous oil painting "Starry Night Over the Rhone" displays a wonderful enchantment technique. Occupying two-thirds of the canvas, the night sky is dotted with moon and stars, creating an illusion of movement, as if they were trying to burst out of the canvas. It's not just a masterpiece. It also uses paint as if it were light itself.

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"Starry Night Over The Rhone" by Vincent Van Gogh

When Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch designer focusing on phosphoric lighting, was commissioned to design a bike path in the Eindhoven region of the Netherlands, where van Gogh once lived, he used colorful stones that glow in the dark. During the day, the path hoards solar energy, which is then emitted at night, making the trail look as if it were itself a van Gogh piece.

Roosegaarde is a European leader in smart roads — interactive, friendly and environmental thoroughfares. One of the ways he makes roads smarter is by using colors that glow in the dark.

Instead of requiring huge amounts of energy to illuminate roads that are often unused at night, Roosegaarde uses phosphoric colors to print the lanes on his experimental road in the Netherlands. At night, they turn the driving experience into something between a discotheque and a futuristic world.

[rebelmouse-image 27088084 alt="""" original_size="1349x900" expand=1]

Daan Roosegaarde and the director of Heijmans, major European construction-services company. Photo: Studio Roosegaarde

The project's inspiration came from the depths of the ocean, from bacteria and other marine creatures that glow in the dark. And the experiment joins a growing number of projects that harness progress in this field over recent years. A year ago, British firm Pro-Teq released a product called Starpath, a phosphoric liquid particle that can be sprayed on any surface. The energy accumulated in the chemical during the day is emitted at night in the form of blue phosphoric light. Cambridge City Council has already started converting its park trails into phosphoric blue in favor of the old lighting.

At the same time, the American company Bioglow has begun marketing saplings of the plant known as Starlight Avatar. These are simple plants that have been genetically modified to include phosphoric lighting from deep sea creatures. They look like any other plant during the day but become a luminescent green source of light at night.

The field holds immense promise, as it could pave the way, so to speak, to the end of public lighting that requires electricity. Street lights eventually may be replaced with trees that have been genetically modified to glow in the dark.

The phosphoric pastel, in other words, is the new green.

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Economy

Lex Tusk? How Poland’s Controversial "Russian Influence" Law Will Subvert Democracy

The new “lex Tusk” includes language about companies and their management. But is this likely to be a fair investigation into breaking sanctions on Russia, or a political witch-hunt in the business sphere?

Photo of President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda

Polish President Andrzej Duda

Piotr Miaczynski, Leszek Kostrzewski

-Analysis-

WARSAW — Poland’s new Commission for investigating Russian influence, which President Andrzej Duda signed into law on Monday, will be able to summon representatives of any company for inquiry. It has sparked a major controversy in Polish politics, as political opponents of the government warn that the Commission has been given near absolute power to investigate and punish any citizen, business or organization.

And opposition politicians are expected to be high on the list of would-be suspects, starting with Donald Tusk, who is challenging the ruling PiS government to return to the presidency next fall. For that reason, it has been sardonically dubbed: Lex Tusk.

University of Warsaw law professor Michal Romanowski notes that the interests of any firm can be considered favorable to Russia. “These are instruments which the likes of Putin and Orban would not be ashamed of," Romanowski said.

The law on the Commission for examining Russian influences has "atomic" prerogatives sewn into it. Nine members of the Commission with the rank of secretary of state will be able to summon virtually anyone, with the powers of severe punishment.

Under the new law, these Commissioners will become arbiters of nearly absolute power, and will be able to use the resources of nearly any organ of the state, including the secret services, in order to demand access to every available document. They will be able to prosecute people for acts which were not prohibited at the time they were committed.

Their prerogatives are broader than that of the President or the Prime Minister, wider than those of any court. And there is virtually no oversight over their actions.

Nobody can feel safe. This includes companies, their management, lawyers, journalists, and trade unionists.

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