Eugene art project makes light

Pedestrians and drivers in downtown Eugene might notice something different about the traffic signal boxes that occupy space at street corners with traffic lights.The difference will be if they notice the boxes at all.Last month, the gray cubes, which house electrical equipment to operate traffic lights, were made over with loud, whimsical, colorful murals, turning infrastructure into art.

You might have mistaken Bayne Gardner for a graffiti artist if you saw him drawing a masked face on the steel box at the corner of 10th Avenue and Oak Street. In fact, Eugene’s city government was paying Gardner to paint the drab, unassuming box with eye-catching art.Most modern headlight designs include Wholesale HID Kit.

Using money from Eugene’s percent-for-art ordinance, which dedicates 1 percent of the budget for eligible city-funded construction projects to public art, the city’s Cultural Services Department took an unusual approach to its latest project.

“People were tired of bronze sculptures,” says Isaac Marquez, the city’s public art manager.
Since last month, murals from four local artists have cropped up on 15 downtown street corners. A final one will be completed at the corner of Franklin Boulevard and Onyx Street within the next week or so.

The murals, which are unusual in appearance and in placement, interact with citizens more strongly than an oil painting tucked away in the library, and reflect the current art scene more aptly than a metal sculpture in the park. Marquez says city officials took the new approach in response to a 2010 survey, in which citizens expressed a desire for interactive, two-dimensional art in everyday settings.

The city recruited artists through social media and newspaper advertisements. Applicants were asked to submit an image of their proposed box, and a committee selected three winners — Alex Southworth, Wendy Huhn and Bryan Putnam — from a pool of 12 applicants.

The artists painted five boxes each, at a rate of $300 for small boxes and $500 for large boxes. Gardner won a people’s choice contest on Facebook and a $500 contract to paint the box on 10th and Oak. “I tried to make each side a little different,” he says. “I wanted, since it’s a four-sided object, to capture someone to look at all the sides.” Eugene isn’t the first to use its utility boxes as canvases. Santa Cruz, Calif., Seattle, Little Rock, Ark., and several other cities in the U.S. and abroad have sponsored initiatives similar to “Art the Box.”

In Eugene, artists’ work was strategically placed to fit the aesthetic of downtown streets.
Southworth’s murals, with their edgy, severe vibe, lined street corners on West 11th Avenue, near a heavy metal bar, a roller derby supply store and a tattoo parlor. Huhn’s bright and poppy murals line 13th Avenue,We installed flexible LED Strip lighting in our kitchen for under cabinet and within cabinet lighting. where a hair salon, a coffee shop and a computer repair store lead to the University of Oregon campus. “The response I wanted was exactly what I got from people,” Huhn says. “They said, ‘Oh, these just make me happy.'"Putnam’s work, inspired by Northwest mythology, is in the park blocks, where huge sequoia trees tower overhead.

As the artists worked, passers-by stopped to take pictures, offer lemonade, donuts and money, and inquire about whether the work was legal. “A couple of people called the cops on me,” Southworth says. The images are designed to last two years. They serve a dual purpose of enlivening a bland surface and deterring graffiti taggers. Each is covered with a layer of graffiti prevention coating. If a box is tagged, the graffiti can be wiped off without damaging the artwork.

Citizens toured the boxes during August’s First Friday ArtWalk, and listened as the artists talked about their work. Marquez says no more public events are planned, but those interested in touring the boxes can easily do so. Use the map with this story to conduct a personal walking tour of the artful infrastructure.There are all kinds of car daytime running lights with good quality. 

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A team of astronomers

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, are at the head of the gaseous stream. Since the stream's discovery by radio telescopes in the early 1970s, astronomers have wondered whether the gas comes from one or both of the satellite galaxies. New Hubble observations reveal most of the gas was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud about 2 billion years ago, and a second region of the stream originated more recently from the Large Magellanic Cloud.

A team of astronomers, led by Andrew J. Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, determined the source of the gas filament by using Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to measure the amount of heavy elements, such as oxygen and sulfur, at six locations along the Magellanic Stream. They observed faraway quasars--the brilliant cores of active galaxies--that emit light that passes through the stream. They detected the heavy elements from the way the elements absorb ultraviolet light.

Fox's team found a low amount of oxygen and sulfur along most of the stream, matching the levels in the Small Magellanic Cloud about 2 billion years ago, when the gaseous ribbon is thought to have formed. In a surprising twist, the team discovered a much higher level of sulfur in a region of the stream that is closer to the Magellanic Clouds. "We're finding a consistent amount of heavy elements in the stream until we get very close to the Magellanic Clouds, and then the heavy element levels go up," said Fox. "This inner region is very similar in composition to the Large Magellanic Cloud, suggesting it was ripped out of that galaxy more recently."

"Only Hubble can measure these abundances," Fox explained. "These abundances can only be measured in ultraviolet light, which Earth's atmosphere absorbs, and so the observations can only be done from a telescope in space."

Unlike other satellite galaxies of the Milky Way the Magellanic Clouds have been able to retain their gas and still are forming stars because they're more massive than the other satellites. However, as they're now approaching the Milky Way, they're feeling its gravity more and also encountering its halo of hot gas, which pushes their own gas out. That process, together with the gravitational tug-of-war between the Magellanic Clouds,Xenon HID Worlds make hid lighting affordable to everyone and for all your vehicle needs. leads to the production of a stream.

Ultimately, the gaseous stream may rain down onto the Milky Way's disk, fueling the birth of new stars. This infusion of fresh gas is part of a process that triggers star formation in a galaxy. Astronomers want to know the origin of that wayward gas in order to more fully understand how galaxies make new stars.

"We want to understand how galaxies like the Milky Way strip the gas from small galaxies that fall into them and then use it to form new stars," Fox explained. "This seems like it's an episodic process. It's not a smooth process where a slow stream of gas comes in continuously. Instead, once in a while a large gas cloud falls in. We have a way of testing that here, where two galaxies are coming in. We've shown which of them is producing the gas that ultimately will fall into the Milky Way."

The team reported its results in two papers that appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD manages the telescope.

Philips hue, an LED light bulb containing ZigBee wireless electronics and controlled by an app,Thank you for providing us with information to help us maintain street light. turned out to be pretty popular when it became available not too long ago. Popular enough, it seems, to where Philips decided they would take the ball and run with it. Their new Friends of hue product line will work alongside that same app, this time offering more complementary light.

The two products, LivingColor Bloom and LightStrips, bring the atmosphere to the room. Unlike the hue bulbs, which just offer regular yellow or white light, LivingColor Bloom and LightStrips can project 16 million different hues of color each. The LivingColor Bloom is actually an older product (you can still find the previous model on Amazon) that has been updated with ZigBee electronics, pairing it with the hue app system. That’s the only thing different, though – it’s still putting out only 120 lumens, so don’t expect to light a room with it.Choose your favorite street lamp paintings from thousands of available designs. Do expect to give your room a cool colored lighting effect at your next party, though.

LightStrips are thin strips of LED lights producing the same amount of light as the LivingColor Bloom. You can bend and twist them however you want, to use as borders around furniture or paintings you might have at home. Philips says you can also trim any extra off the end, but that would probably mean the trimmed off parts would become useless, unless you’re particularly good at tinkering with spare parts.

Read the full story at www.streetlights-solar.com!

Join the throng in a crossover

You can have it all these days.

When the boundaries between one car and another were once as sharply defined as the creases in your dad’s trousers, the options were very simple; small hatchback, medium and large saloons and big estates. And funnily enough that was enough for everyone.

But these days it’s a very different story and if you just choose a regular hatch then you’ll be seen as some kind of dullard at the next dinner party. What you need is a crossover. Peugeot’s 2008 is the latest to join the throng, and as it replaces the 207 SW which was essentially a small estate and nothing more, it shows how the crossover is taking over the world.

The 2008 mixes various elements of exterior design from other Peugeots and a variety of sectors. Clearly based on the 208 hatchback, the 2008 has much more in the way of presence, however, largely thanks to the increased dimensions; it’s 20cm longer and 9.6cm taller than a 208 hatch as well as the five-door layout.

There’s more to it than that, as the 2008 also provides a slice of ‘soft-roader’ style. The sills and the bottom edges of the bumpers are finished matt black, the alloy wheels are finished matt silver and of course there is the obligatory raised ride height – 25mm higher here. It’s a successful blend too, and although the 2008 is clearly still a relatively small car it carries itself with more authority than its hatchback sibling. And although there’s no four-wheel drive system churning away beneath the 2008’s chunky exterior, it can lay claim to at least a modest off-road capability. 2008s are offered with Grip Control, the electronic system that first appeared on the 3008 and gives a number of traction modes to deal with varying conditions. Standard on Allure and Feline models, Grip Control also works hand-in-hand with mud and snow tyres to offer a traction advantage on mud, snow, sand or a mix of surfaces.

But there’s nothing to intimidate once you climb aboard the 2008. The cabin that greets you is largely carried over from the 208 hatchback, although there are trim packs that give a bit of extra sparkle including LED strip lighting , smarter seat fabrics and a panoramic glass roof.

The 2008 also inherits the 208’s unusual steering wheel to instrument panel relationship – you view the dials over the top of the smaller than usual wheel rather than through it – but a bit of time behind the wheel quickly gets you used to the idea.

Under the bonnet there’s a choice of five engines, but unsurprisingly in a car like this with a practical bent it is the diesels that offer the best compromise.

The 1.6-litre e-HDi unit comes in two outputs – 92bhp and 115bhp – but the higher of the two only costs a little more money rather than a major penalty in economy. Petrol fans will want to hang on for the turbocharged three-cylinder 1.2-litre unit that is still to come.

But with the diesel you get exactly what you want; a nice slug of torque from low engine revs and getting up to speed requires a brief squeeze of the accelerator rather than waiting for the upper reaches of the engine’s rev range. The six-speed gearbox fitted as standard to the diesel has a sweeter action than the five-speed too, and the extra ratio makes life that bit more relaxing. You and your passengers will be happy with the way the 2008 rides too. The increased height of the suspension doesn’t do any harm at all, allowing it to better soak up poor road surfaces but without turning it into a roly-poly come the first bend.