European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - March 7, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Friday March 7, 1986 the stars and stripes Page 9 test for cleaner air gets a Blue Light by Joseph Owen Stuttgart Bureau Stuttgart chronic air pollution problems in the German state of Baden Wuerttemberg Are giving Drivers the blues. Blue lights that is. The state Interior ministry is coordinating an air pollution abatement Experiment involving the use of Blue traffic lights and other devices at Street intersections to per Suade Drivers to shut off their motors voluntarily while waiting for a Green Light. The devices Are integrated with Stan Dard traffic signals in 15 locations around the state. Many Are located close to american military bases. The number of locations May double by the time the experimental period ends in March 1987, said Stefan Frey the ministry s chief governmental adviser. Frey said the state will report the Experiment s results to the Federal traffic minister who May use them to draw up new traffic regulations incorporating the signals. The Blue lights Are mounted on traffic signals in Buehl Goeppinger Loer rach and Ost Wildern. The Buehl Model depicts an Arrow circling an ignition key. A sign by the Light asks motorists in German to shut off their motors when the Blue lights appear so they will help the environment. Buehl officials monitoring the intersections twice for a total of eight hours Dis covered about 40 percent of the Drivers shut off their motors when they faced a Blue Light said chief City inspector an Dreas Bohnert. He said he Hopes More Drivers will comply in the Spring. Through the Winter people Are afraid to turn their motors off because they think they won t go on again Bohnert said. The timing sequence of each signal de is photo by Joseph Owen Blue Light signalling motorists to turn their motors off appears next to the red stoplight. Vice is designed to give Drivers plenty of time to restart their cars before the Green Light appears. When the red and Blue lights Are on together the Blue Light shuts off first. The yellow Light comes on seven seconds later then the Green Light appears three seconds after that Bohnert said. Another system uses two extra White lights marked aus off and an on. It is functioning in 10 communities to Eslingen Ess Lingen Friedrich Shafon Kirchheim Korn Westheim Leonberg Metzinger Lucr Tingin Reut Lingen and Uebe Lingen. Each aus Light is mounted to the right of a red traffic Sig Nal. The an Light is just unde Cit to the right of a yellow signal. A third system operates at an intersection in tue Bingen. A rotating clock hand is superimposed on the red Light and Drivers Are urged to shut off their motors until the moving hand reaches a certain Posi Tion. Frey said if 20,000 Drivers pass daily through an intersection and All of them shut off their motors while waiting for a Green Light their action would reduce an Nual exhaust emissions at that Corner by 1,000 kilograms of Carbon monoxide 20 to 40 kilograms of hydrocarbons and 300 Grams of Lead. A red Light should be More than 30 seconds Long to justify the additional Sig nals he said although a 20-second wait is easily Long enough to warrant shutting off a motor which functions efficiently. If you be got a very bad engine or a very old car where you be got to press the accelerator to Start it20 seconds May be too Short he said. Frey said a similar project in Switzer land inspired the Baden Wuerttemberg Experiment. Recycling pro eco Furns units scrap info Cash by Tony Nauroth Nuernberg Bureau Fuerth Germany they re spinning Gold out of Straw in the Nuernberg military Community and the proceeds Are going Back to the Miller s daughter no longer to Rumpelstiltskin. A 3-year-old program that s reaping Cash for units in the states is just beginning to get off the ground in Europe. The depart ment of defense recyclable materials sales program has started turning proceeds from scrap material sales Over to the units. The profits used to go Back into the . Treasury said capt. Michael j. Stine chief of the Nuernberg defense re utilization and marketing office. Stine s office oversees the program in his area which includes the entire state of a Varia. The program is organized along the military Community structures with a pro Gram manager monitoring his or her area of responsibility. Project officer capt. Malcolm l. Foster said the manager s Job is to Monitor documentation pass along lists of material which the demo classifies As scrap and makes sure the units have some system to separate their scrap into proper categories. When a unit turns in scrap Stine explained they get credit for that turn in. When their lot is sold the profits go Back to the unit. The better a Job they do in Segre gating the scrap the More it s  Stine said the Money can be used for pollution control or Energy saving projects and morale and welfare support. He defined scrap As items such As Sheet Metal tracked vehicle pads Copper tubing or tents that cannot be repaired and Are not simply trash. He said precious metals and certain military items Are exempt from the program. Stine said scrap sold by bulk at his demo Yards represents the lion s share of the Money they pull in. Eighty five to 90 percent of our sales is from scrap he said. With $1.5 million in yearly sales the Nuernberg office has one of the highest sales scrap records out of the 135 offices that make up the worldwide demo sys tem Stine said. Our auctions Don t make nearly that much. They re really just a Community service he said. One of the biggest moneymakers is the tonnage of brass Shell casings from expended ammunition which is turned in at the Grafe Woehr training area. Part of the contract with local bidders is that they must demilitarized this material Stine said. This includes melting the Cas Ings into brass ingots while a demo offi Cial observes he said. Soviet probe sends first View of Halley s nucleus Moscow up the soviet Vega-1 space probe hurtled through the dust sur rounding Halley s Comet thursday to trans Mit Man s first View of the nucleus of the famous celestial visitor. After initial debate about what they were seeing soviet and american scientists burst into applause As a nucleus estimated at Only 2-2.5 Miles across burst into View on their control room television screens. It is a Day of science history. Never before have we seen a Comet close up said Fred Whipple the originator of the amen German inflation declines Wiesbaden up the German inflation rate already believed to be the lowest in the world slipped below 1 percent in february the Federal statistics office has announced. The Agency said the february rate of 0.7 percent was the lowest for any month since december 1967 when prices increased by just 0.6 percent on an annual basis. Theory that the Comet is a dirty snowball of Frozen particles. After six years of planning the Mission came Down to a tense 30-minute dash from a distance of 60,000 Miles to Only 6,000 Miles from the Core. Racing toward Halley s Comet at 48 Miles per second the space probe began encountering increasing amounts of parti cles that could have proved fatal. But scientists at the control room and television viewers across the nation watched As the Vega-1 reached its nearest Point to the Core with its instruments still working. With the room full of excited scientists Burton Edelson associate administrator of the National aeronautics and space administration stood up and told his soviet colleagues it gives me great pleasure to congratulate you with this great  . Involvement in the study of Halley Comet Cut sharply by the destruction of the space shuttle consisted of an instrument aboard Vega to Analyse dust particles. The computer image showed a yellow Center surrounded by a hard Blue and then a lighter purple Halo. Despite travelling at the Speed of Light the image was 9 /2 min utes old by the time it reached Earth More than 100 million Miles away. Although it will take months to Analyse All the data from the experiments aboard Vega-1, initial findings were being announced minutes after the Mission succeeded. There was less dust than expected an Aid for observation but scientists said the Gas density was higher than predicted. There were water molecules but the Analy Sis of other substances will take longer. " i expect other data will give us the answer to what ices Are there said Whipple a member of the smithsonian astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge mass. They will give important information about the origins of comets and that s the origin of the universe Whipple told re porters at the soviet space research Institute. Roald Sageev director of the soviet Institute appeared from the Center on inter National television and explained the final historic approach to the Comet s Core. This is a body which has never been seen by anyone Sageev said. Comets probably were born at the very first moment of the formation of our solar system some 4.5 billion years  the Success of Vega-1 will be followed up in three Days by an identical Vega-2 and next week by the West european Giotto Mission which is designed to head on a suicide Mission into the Core itself. Pilot 7 Swiss executives killed in plane crash Bern Switzerland up a twin engine private aircraft crashed after Takeoff in a snowstorm killing All eight people on Board. A police statement said the Pilot and the seven passengers were Swiss. It said the passengers were executives from a Bern company and were leaving on a business trip to Dusseldorf Germany. Their names were not disclosed