The Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro has been described as ‘unsafe’ and ‘unlivable’ just two weeks before the Games are set to begin.

No lighting has been installed in the stairwells of the 31, 17 storey tower blocks that comprise the largest accommodation site in Olympic history.

Australian Olympic officials have said that they will refuse to let their team move in unless the lighting issues are rectified, an issue which they say will put their athletes at risk if left unresolved.

Great Britain, the USA, Italy and New Zealand have also raised complaints with Olympic officials and some athletes plan to boycott the village.

Other maintenance problems have also been reported such as blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring and dirty floors.

Rio officials are said to have dispatched a team of cleaners and electricians to solve the snagging issues and in the mean time some athletes are being offered accommodation in hotels.

The Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Janeiro Eduardo Paes, responded to the Australian criticism by claiming that the Rio Olympic Village was considerably better than the one provided by Sydney for the 2000 games.

‘As hosts, what we want is for everyone to feel at home. It is natural that you have some kind of adjustments to do, but we will make the Australians feel at home here,’ the mayor said in response to the criticism.

‘I almost feel like putting a kangaroo in front of their building to make them feel at home,’ Paes concluded.

Essentials aside, the Olympic Village apartments do come with air-conditioning and mosquito repellers in an attempt to prevent another major problem set to threaten the 2016 Games, the Zika virus.

Poplar Nursery is currently run by the third generation of the same family who started the business in 1938.  The nursery has expanded over the years and now includes a farm shop and deli, restaurant, miniature railway and the latest addition this year, a new shop floor area for BBQ’s and patio furniture incorporating the Dino fittings.  Installed by AD Mitchell Electrical Contractors Ltd, Colchester, the Dino linear luminaires fit the new retail area perfectly as the fittings blend into the ceiling space but offer excellent wide light distribution and high uniformity at 70% lumen at 50,000 hours.  Due to their flexibility, the Dino fittings were also fitted in two general storage areas and a food cold store at the nursery.

Dino is available in 19.5W, 22.5W, 35W, 46W, 63W and 70W variations, the fitting has a UV resistant and corrosion proof casing making it suitable for harsh environments with an IP66 protection against water and dust and is IK08 vandal resistant.  Dino also comes with Megaman’s 3-year warranty.

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Experts at Disney Research and ETH Zurich believe that it is possible to create a network of luminaires that can send messages to each other, while having no effect on the level of lighting they emit. The experts have designed a Visible Light Communications system that is able to connect to appliances and wearable devices.

‘LED light bulbs mounted on the ceiling or in free-standing floor lamps easily cover a room, serving as illumination while at the same time creating a room-area network that allows data exchange between light-emitting devices,’ commented Markus Gross, vice president at Disney Research.

‘Even if a bulb is not needed for lighting and is switched off, it can still serve as a receiver of signals from those devices,’ he added.

The research team used commercially available, off-the-shelf LED light bulbs to create the system. The fixtures were then modified and a System-on-a-Chip, or SoC, running an embedded version of Linux was added to each luminaire, as well as photodiodes to enhance the sensing of incoming signals.

The team’s completed prototype is able to create stable networks that can support the low bandwidth applications typical of most ‘Internet of Things’ devices.

‘Interconnecting appliances, sensors and a wide variety of devices into the Internet of Things has many potential benefits, but using radio links to do so threatens to make the radio spectrum an even scarcer resource,’ commented Markus Gross, vice president at Disney Research. ‘Visible light communication networks act to conserve the radio spectrum.’

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The Government is investing nearly £5 million to encourage leading UK firms such as Sainsbury’s, to install energy efficient lighting.

The money is part of an attempt by Whitehall to reduce peak time energy levels as fears rise that the National Grid will not be able to cope with electricity demands this winter, leading to nationwide blackouts.

A string of leading companies, including British Gas, Sainsbury’s, Sony and BAE Systems, have bid for funding in the second auction of the Electricity Demand Reduction (EDR) pilot.

Plumbing firm Wolseley UK received an EDR grant of £100k and is using the money to kit out its distribution centre with upgraded LED lighting.

The company claims that the new fixtures will reduce its electricity demand by 236,000 kWh, which is enough energy to power more than 300 homes.

Wolseley worked closely with Cloudfm on the maintenance work, a partnership that has also led to Wolseley’s head office in Leamington Spa being awarded a BREEAM “Excellent” rating.

The scheme works by encouraging consumers to provide capacity in the form of megawatts to help the UK meet its energy efficiency targets and reduce pressure on the National Grid. The pilot also reduces the energy bills of those involved.

The Government had originally allotted £6 million to the pilot, but a lack of uptake meant that not all the money was allocated.

This is the second time that an EDR auction has failed to reach its target, the first, held last year, saw only £1.28m out of a total of £10 million being snapped up.

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