An overhaul of downtown's bustling Rosa Parks Circle is expected to make the urban park less maintenance-intensive while preserving the look world-renowned artist Maya Lin intended when she designed it.
Crews contracted by Twin Lakes Nursery have spent the past few weeks removing the loose, gray gravel that made up paths within the park and replacing it with a similar-looking porous concrete material that will result in less dust and gravel migrating around the park and less maintenance to keep the paths groomed.
The new paths are part of a $211,000 renovation that also includes electrical improvements, new lighting posts and replacement of some damaged seatwalls. The work is being paid for out of an endowment fund set up when the park was renovated.
The improvements are slated to be completed in time for ice-skating season to begin along with the Dec. 2 lighting of the Christmas tree outside the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
For the holidays, thousands of LED lights are being hung on trees inside the park and at the nearby Louis Campau Promenade. The city's Downtown Development Authority recently agreed to pay Bazen Electric up to $22,262 for the purchase and installation of the lights, which have a "snowfall effect."
The lights are expected to last several years with future installations handled by the city's parks department.
Installation of the lights and modifications of the materials used on the park's paths required approval of Lin. Her design of the park, titled "Eclipic," was completed in 2001.
Celebrate Sunshine Coast Council's program of fun, family-friendly festive season activities and events.
Council starts the festive season by progressively flicking on the switches of 29 community Christmas trees as part of the annual Christmas Tree Trail.
The idea of the trail began more than two years ago when council began talking with communities across the region about how they celebrate Christmas and what they would like to see happen in their region to make this a special time of year in the future. Resoundingly, the answer was that locals wanted more lights and a signature tree of their own in a place where all could enjoy it.
The festive tree in Pomona is a ficus fig tree.
The decorations installed include custom designed multicolour lit balls and small lit green spirals. The tree is crowned by a large lit white star at its peak and all the decorations have been designed and assembled in Queensland.
Environmentally friendly Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting features across all of the trees this year, keeping with council's vision for the Sunshine Coast to be Australia's most sustainable region - vibrant, green and diverse.
Council is using the latest in technology to enable residents to view the history of each community tree simply by using smart phone scan codes at each site.
The community also has the opportunity to find out about community festive season celebrations in their area and how they can join in, simply by clicking on the various trees online at council's website.
2011年11月1日星期二
Hit Efficiency Out of the Park with Advanced Lighting Control
Energy efficiency is potential opportunity residing in commercial building systems. If tapped, it is profit that grows annually as energy prices rise. Yet for as long as this opportunity is left untapped, it becomes more costly to implement.
In October 2009, the average cost per kilowatt-hour was approximately $0.10 for commercial buildings, 42 percent higher than the average for the year 1999. Typically the largest and least controllable load in a commercial building, lighting accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the average business’ electric bill and 25 percent of an average building’s total energy use (including electricity and all other fuels).
A large portion of this rising cost is avoidable. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about $130 to135 billion, or 57 to 59 percent, of the some $230 billion annual cost of global lighting could be saved by using commercially available energy-efficient lighting technologies – with 25 to 40 percent of those savings achievable in the commercial sector.
Within this context, advanced lighting control provides a platform able to accomplish a broad spectrum of integrated strategies for the purpose of energy management, such as smart time scheduling, occupancy control, load shedding, daylighting control, task tuning and personal lighting control. Good systems are simple to design, install and use. They adapt to future needs and lend themselves to both retrofit and new building applications.
Considering that November is the month the sports world completes its seasonal transition from baseball to football, this is an opportune time to focus on a case study involving the implementation of advance lighting control in a high-profile stadium – namely, Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario.
Employing a customized approach, the advance lighting control system at Rogers Centre was designed to accommodate needs and usage in a number of distinct areas. For example, in the parking garage - where the lights previously had not been switched off in 18 years – it provided for occupancy sensor based switching control on a zone basis. Additionally, the eight-foot, T12, 96-watt lamps were changed out with two, four-foot T8, 32 watt lamps and electronic ballasts.
In the concourses and stairway areas, a combination of occupancy sensing and time-scheduled switching (based on building events) was employed. The existing, 175-watt metal halide fixtures were retrofitted with two, 32-watt T8 lamps and standard electronic ballasts.
All office areas and lounges were equipped with personal lighting control, time scheduling, daylight harvesting and occupancy sensing technologies. Additionally, all existing fluorescent fixtures were retrofitted with new dimming electronic ballasts. The approach in the luxury boxes involved control of lighting and television circuits by time schedule, based on Rogers Centre’s scheduled events.
In October 2009, the average cost per kilowatt-hour was approximately $0.10 for commercial buildings, 42 percent higher than the average for the year 1999. Typically the largest and least controllable load in a commercial building, lighting accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the average business’ electric bill and 25 percent of an average building’s total energy use (including electricity and all other fuels).
A large portion of this rising cost is avoidable. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about $130 to135 billion, or 57 to 59 percent, of the some $230 billion annual cost of global lighting could be saved by using commercially available energy-efficient lighting technologies – with 25 to 40 percent of those savings achievable in the commercial sector.
Within this context, advanced lighting control provides a platform able to accomplish a broad spectrum of integrated strategies for the purpose of energy management, such as smart time scheduling, occupancy control, load shedding, daylighting control, task tuning and personal lighting control. Good systems are simple to design, install and use. They adapt to future needs and lend themselves to both retrofit and new building applications.
Considering that November is the month the sports world completes its seasonal transition from baseball to football, this is an opportune time to focus on a case study involving the implementation of advance lighting control in a high-profile stadium – namely, Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario.
Employing a customized approach, the advance lighting control system at Rogers Centre was designed to accommodate needs and usage in a number of distinct areas. For example, in the parking garage - where the lights previously had not been switched off in 18 years – it provided for occupancy sensor based switching control on a zone basis. Additionally, the eight-foot, T12, 96-watt lamps were changed out with two, four-foot T8, 32 watt lamps and electronic ballasts.
In the concourses and stairway areas, a combination of occupancy sensing and time-scheduled switching (based on building events) was employed. The existing, 175-watt metal halide fixtures were retrofitted with two, 32-watt T8 lamps and standard electronic ballasts.
All office areas and lounges were equipped with personal lighting control, time scheduling, daylight harvesting and occupancy sensing technologies. Additionally, all existing fluorescent fixtures were retrofitted with new dimming electronic ballasts. The approach in the luxury boxes involved control of lighting and television circuits by time schedule, based on Rogers Centre’s scheduled events.
2011年10月18日星期二
California Prison Hunger Strike Ends, Conditions of "Immense Torture" Continue
Imagine a concrete room no more than eight by ten feet. It has no windows, only a perforated steel door facing a solid concrete wall. Fluorescent lights stay on 24 hours a day.
Now imagine being locked in that room.
This is the reality for 1,111 people locked in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California's Pelican Bay State Prison. The SHU comprises half of the prison. It is explicitly designed to keep prisoners in long-term solitary confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Men are locked into their cells for at least 22 hours a day. Food is delivered twice a day through a slot in the cell door. They are allowed five hours a week of exercise in a cement yard the length of three cells with a roof only partially open to the sky.
Prison administrators place men in the SHU either for a fixed term for violating a prison rule or for an indeterminate term because they have been accused of being prison gang members, often by confidential informants and highly dubious evidence.
Prisoners who have been "validated" as gang members are released from the SHU into the general prison population only if they "debrief" or provide information incriminating other prisoners. Debriefing can be dangerous to both the prisoner who debriefs and his family on the outside. In addition, prisoners are often falsely identified as gang members by others who debrief in order to escape the SHU. One does not necessarily need to be a gang member to be sent to the SHU: jailhouse lawyers and others who challenge inhumane prison conditions are disproportionately sent to the SHU.
Mutope DuGoya is one of those men: he states that, in 2001, despite his work with Code 4, the prison's Scared Straight program and his record of remaining free of violations for six years, he was placed in SHU on the word of a confidential informant.
Another prisoner, who has been in SHU for 21 years, writes, "Because I am here with people who the CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] have labeled as being gang-involved, the CDCR uses that to confirm that I am involved with a gang."
These atrocities are not limited to Pelican Bay. California holds nearly 4,000 people in SHUs and nearly 14,500 in other forms of segregation within its prison system. Over 240 of these people are women, who are often guarded and watched by male staff, even when they are undressing, showering or on the toilet. Transgender and transsexual prisoners are often likely to be placed in isolation.
Pelican Bay State Prison opened in December 1989. Almost immediately, prisoners began filing complaints about abusive conditions.
In 1993, over 3,500 prisoners signed onto Madrid v. Gomez, a class-action lawsuit that charged prison officials with abuse and violation of their human rights. In 1995, the federal court issued injunctions aimed at eliminating excessive force, improving health care and removing prisoners with mental illness from the Security Housing Unit. Although he stated that conditions "hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable," the presiding judge stopped short of declaring the physical structure of long-term solitary confinement unconstitutional.
Now imagine being locked in that room.
This is the reality for 1,111 people locked in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California's Pelican Bay State Prison. The SHU comprises half of the prison. It is explicitly designed to keep prisoners in long-term solitary confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Men are locked into their cells for at least 22 hours a day. Food is delivered twice a day through a slot in the cell door. They are allowed five hours a week of exercise in a cement yard the length of three cells with a roof only partially open to the sky.
Prison administrators place men in the SHU either for a fixed term for violating a prison rule or for an indeterminate term because they have been accused of being prison gang members, often by confidential informants and highly dubious evidence.
Prisoners who have been "validated" as gang members are released from the SHU into the general prison population only if they "debrief" or provide information incriminating other prisoners. Debriefing can be dangerous to both the prisoner who debriefs and his family on the outside. In addition, prisoners are often falsely identified as gang members by others who debrief in order to escape the SHU. One does not necessarily need to be a gang member to be sent to the SHU: jailhouse lawyers and others who challenge inhumane prison conditions are disproportionately sent to the SHU.
Mutope DuGoya is one of those men: he states that, in 2001, despite his work with Code 4, the prison's Scared Straight program and his record of remaining free of violations for six years, he was placed in SHU on the word of a confidential informant.
Another prisoner, who has been in SHU for 21 years, writes, "Because I am here with people who the CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] have labeled as being gang-involved, the CDCR uses that to confirm that I am involved with a gang."
These atrocities are not limited to Pelican Bay. California holds nearly 4,000 people in SHUs and nearly 14,500 in other forms of segregation within its prison system. Over 240 of these people are women, who are often guarded and watched by male staff, even when they are undressing, showering or on the toilet. Transgender and transsexual prisoners are often likely to be placed in isolation.
Pelican Bay State Prison opened in December 1989. Almost immediately, prisoners began filing complaints about abusive conditions.
In 1993, over 3,500 prisoners signed onto Madrid v. Gomez, a class-action lawsuit that charged prison officials with abuse and violation of their human rights. In 1995, the federal court issued injunctions aimed at eliminating excessive force, improving health care and removing prisoners with mental illness from the Security Housing Unit. Although he stated that conditions "hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable," the presiding judge stopped short of declaring the physical structure of long-term solitary confinement unconstitutional.
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