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B4 Metro Boston Sunday Globe FEBRUARY 16, 2014 Starts Stops New England in brief BY MARTINE POWERS TRAFFIC UPDATES ONLINEATWWW.BOSTON.COMSTARTS MARTINE POWERSGLOBE STAFF Four engineering students at Northeastern University have created a "smart bike" with sensors to detect cars. HINGHAM Snow delays response to 2-alarm fire Firefighters were slowed by the snowfall Saturday when battling a two-alarm fire that displaced a husband and wife, officials said. The two-story wood frame home on Tower Brook Road caught fire at 3: 10 p.m., minutes after the wife, whose name was not released, turned on an electric baseboard heater, said Fire Captain William Powers. The heater was on a three-season porch in the rear of the house. The fire spread from the porch to the main part of the home, causing about $300,000 in damage, Powers said.

No one was injured and the fire was extinguished at around 4:15 p.m. The Rockland and Norwell fire departments also responded, Powers said. MANSFIELD Pilot misses runway, hits snowbank A small aircraft hit a snowbank and skidded off the runway during a landing Saturday morning at Mansfield Municipal Airport. The pilot, the only person aboard the plane, was not injured, according to Mansfield Police. Damage to the plane was estimated at $45,000.

According to police, the student pilot was practicing landings in a single-engine Cessna 172 about 9:40 a.m. The pilot flew too low, and the plane's wheels hit a snowbank 180 yards away from the preferred landing area, damaging the landing gear. The plane then skidded 200 yards down the runway and into the snow. ST. ALBANS, VT.

Plow hits propane tank, ignites blaze Officials said it appeared that a snowplow hit a propane tank, sparking a fire at a fuel company in St. Albans. Fire and police crews were on the scene Saturday morning at Liberty Propane and nearby residents were evacuated. A police dispatcher said the propane was burned off and the fire was out by noon. He said residents were able to return home after air quality tests.

Authorities said three apartments were damaged by water. (AP) WINSLOW, MAINE Woman indicted over embezzlement A Winslow woman has been indicted on charges of bilking two youth sports teams. Wendi Willette, 41, had pleaded not guilty in November to charges of stealing more than $10,000 from the Winslow High School Wrestling Booster Club during nearly three years starting in 2010 while she served as treasurer. The indictment filed Friday also accuses her of embezzling from the China Girls Field Hockey Team in September. Willette said Saturday that she had no comment on the additional charge.

Town officials released a statement in November saying Willette was no longer involved with the field hockey program. (AP) WORCESTER Effort on to fix up Civil War monument A move is on to fix up Worcester's Civil War monument. The 140-year-old, 66-foot tall monument on the common memorializes the 398 city residents who died fighting. But the names on the monument's bronze plaques have become difficult, and in some cases impossible, to read. The Telegram Gazette reported that resident Edward Moynihan is behind the effort, which has caught the attention of the City Council.

No estimates of the restoration project's costs are available yet. The goal is to have the repairs done before the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War on April 8, 2015. (AP) HARTFORD Governor to meet with new rail chief Governor Dannel Malloy is set to meet privately Monday with the new president of Metro-North Railroad. Malloy, who has been critical of the commuter railroad in recent months, has said he was looking forward to working with Joseph Giulietti, a former executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority. Giulietti is replacing Howard Permut, who served as the head of Metro-North Railroad since 2008.

In December, following a derailment in the Bronx that killed four passengers, Malloy called on the railroad to provide an action plan addressing safety issues on the system. (AP) 'Smart bike' focuses on safety It sounds like a picture straight out of the Jet-sons: A bicycle that communicates with its rider, sends messages to surrounding drivers, and can serve as a black box in the unfortunate event of a collision. But for four mechanical engineering students at Northeastern University, that future isn't too far away. They've created a "smart bike" officially known as the Interactive Bicyclist Accident Prevention System and though it's still a ways off from appearing on the market, the students are hopeful that their system might be a game-changer when it comes bicyclist safety. Their creation consists of two consoles that can be mounted to the front and rear of a bicycle, featuring multiple sensors that detect encroaching cars.

If there is not a 3-foot-wide berth between the car and the bike, both consoles on the bike will project green laser lines onto pavement, creating an emergency bike lane. "These are supposed to imitate a bike lane where there are no bike lanes in the street," said one of the students working on the project, undergraduate mechanical engineer Carlo Sartori. There are other features designed to help cyclists and drivers avoid an imminent crash: If a car and bike are too close, the bike will emit a loud message, telling the driver to move further away. And if a cyclist approaches an intersection too quickly, the handlebars will vibrate, telling the cyclist to slow down or stop for a red light. The consoles will also feature Bluetooth technology, allowing the rider's smartphone to communicate with the bike: the phone, for example, will be able to detect trends in people's riding habits, informing them that if they keep riding the way they do, they have a 70 percent likelihood of getting into a crash.

And the vibrating handles, hooked up to the phone's GPS signal, can alert riders when they need to turn to reach their destination. But perhaps the coolest part of this smart bike technology is the potential ability for the bike to communicate directly with the driver of a car. just the timing cycle to minimize the number of idling vehicles. The lights were working great, Paulus reported, cutting down on the amount of time he spent twiddling his thumbs in gridlock. That is, until they weren't.

"Since last September they have not functioned as smart lights," Paulus said, "and simply change on a regular pattern." He wanted to complain, or at least get an explanation about what happened, but he said he was given the typical bureaucratic run-around: A call to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation led him to State Police, who said on multiple occasions that they would look into it but never responded, which prompted another call to the secretary of transportation's office, who punted to the Boston mayor's hotline, which finally patched him through to the agency responsible: the Department of Conservation and Recreation. And yet, when he got through to them with his question, he never heard back. "Maybe there is a simple answer to this, and there is a good reason smart lights aren't functioning at this intersection, but I feel ineffective in finding the answer," Paulus wrote. "It is just amazing when one encounters the barriers that bureaucracy builds that prevent the resolution of a simple straightforward problem." I talked to Bill Hickey Department of Conservation and Recreation spokesman, and he had an answer: The light was broken. And it couldn't be fixed right now because of the cold.

"Our contractors went out to inspect the light in question, and found that there is an issue with a cable that feeds the detection system on one of the approaches to the light," Hickey said. "As a result, the light defaulted back to being timer-driven rather than sensor-driven." Reverting to the default timer setting, Hickey added, does not pose any safety issue to drivers at the intersection. There are plans to fix the cable so the traffic lights can return to sensory mode, but Department of Conservation and Recreation officials can't do it yet. "The cable is underground, and the ground is frozen," Hickey said. "So we will have to wait until there is a thaw before we can replace the cable." In the meantime, Hickey said, DCR will make an adjustment to the light's timer, to help prevent the extended waits that drivers are experiencing.

Paulus said he was glad to hear that a solution is on its way, but disappointed that a light installed so recently would already be experiencing mechanical issues. "It just is irritating that we spend so much on these traffic issues, attempting to resolve conflicts, and when we are successful the maintenance of the new technology is lacking," Paulus said. Martine Powers can be reached at martine.powersglobe.com. Follow her on Twitter Car-to-car communication and collision avoidance systems have been turning a lot of heads recently; Hyundai topped many of this year's lists of best Super Bowl commercials lists with a slapstick advertisement about its new auto-emergency braking system, featuring a hapless teenager who narrowly avoids a fender-bender because of the technology. The "smart bike" designers want to bring that same technology to bikes, providing drivers with a heads-up if they're about to pass a person on a bicycle or instructing them to move to another lane to give the cyclist more space.

Amir B. Farjadian, a mechanical engineering doctoral student working on the project, said he expects that someday technology to enable bicycle warning systems will be required in all new vehicles. To get their prototype out of the lab and into stores, they've received support from IDEA, Northeastern's student-run venture accelerator, which will provide funding as they refine the technology's design. Farjadian said his work making a "smart bike" a reality is driven by the prevalence of crashes in the United States and in Boston; he rides his bike to school every day, and on his route, he passes by two ghost bikes bicycles painted white to memorialize a person killed while cycling. "That's a very sad scene, and that scene triggered us to think about improving people's safety," Farjadian said.

"Almost nothing has been done in this area. Constantinos Mavroidis, a Northeastern professor and director of the school's Biomedical Mechatronics Laboratory, said there has been a dearth of safety improvements to bicycles, which have remained largely the same for years. "We're trying to establish communication between the biker and other vehicles, so everyone will be warned," Mavroidis said. And the designers, who include students Qingchao Andy Kong and Camilo Madriz, have earned a seal of approval from Nicole Freedman, Boston's bike czar. They said she's interested in the technology, but warned that it would have to be affordable under $100 in order to garner widespread appeal.

Madriz, who has been racing bikes since he was a child and rides on Northeastern's cycling team, said he expects to see sensors and Bluetooth technology become standard fare for people seeking to trick out their new bicycles. "At bike stores, they're always trying to push you to buy performance metric stuff for your bike," Madriz said. "But apart from the bike light and the helmet, there's nothing else to buy to keep you safe." Cold prevents repair to traffic light in Roslindale Reason number 674 why this "polar vortex" weather is basically the worst thing ever: It's messing with our traffic lights. Driver Ron Paulus wrote a couple months ago to say that he had noticed an improvement in the traffic lights at Centre Street and VFW Parkway, directly across from the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale, that lasted a while. "The lights were converted to 'smart lights' some many months ago and really helped the flow of traffic in this heavily traveled area," Paulus said, referring to the kind of traffic lights that use sensors to detect approaching cars and ad Advertising DISPLAY (617) 929-2200 bostonglobemedia.com News CONTACTS, TIPS, COMMENTS Switchboard: (617) 929-2000 (617) 929-7400 newstipglobe.com comments globe SPOTLIGHT TEAM TIP LINE (617) 929-7483 Customer service PRINT AND DIGITAL (888) 694-5623 circulationservices globe Director of Customer Service: Robert Saurer (61 7) 929-2209, robert.sam-erglobe.com Lottery Bird Sightings SATURDAY MIDDAY 1668 Payoffs (based on a $1 bet) EXACT ORDER (617) 929-1500 boston.comclassifleds Vice President of Advertising: Jason I (617) 929-2710, jkissellglobe.com $3.50 3.50 4.00 LUCKY FOR LIFE Thu.

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03-05-26-29-30-47 PREVIOUS DRAWINGS Midday Night Friday 8970 2219 Thursday 9213 0722 Wednesday 2860 7075 Tuesday 1038 9554 Monday 4424 1287 Sunday 5490 1623 WEEKEND NUMBERS AROUND NEW ENGLAND Powerball Sat. 2-9-14-21-23 PB 3 Wed. 36-44-49-52-57 PB 01 Friday Connecticut Classic 01-11-27-40-42-43 Maine, N.H., Vermont Day: 3-digit 285 4-digit 1282 Eve: 3-digit 390 4-digit 4550 Rhode Island 5598 All 4 digits $4,618 First or last 3 $647 Any 2 digits $55 Any 1 digit $6 ANY ORDER All 4 digits $385 First 3 $216 Last 3 $216 SATURDAY NIGHT 6969 Payoffs (based on a $1 bet) EXACT ORDER All 4 digits $3,149 First or last 3 $441 Any 2 digits $38 Any 1 digit $4 ANY ORDER Recent bird sightings as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society: The continuing story for this week is the "Winter of the Snowy Owls," with the owls being reported from Gloucester, Rockport, Salisbury Beach, Newburyport, Plum Island, Somerville, Fairhaven, Mashpee, and Lakeville. Bald eagles were seen in Falmouth, Duxbury, Quincy, and the lower Merrimack River, where there were at least 1 1 birds. Cape Cod: Reports included a merlin in West Dennis, a bald eagle and a possible Thayer's gull in Falmouth, and a greater white-fronted goose in Chatham.

Cape Ann: Birds reported included two Barrow's gold-eneyes in Plum Cove of Lanes-ville, four ring-necked ducks, two American wigeon, a rough-legged hawk, a red-shouldered hawk, four glaucous and 11 Iceland gulls, a dovekie, a razorbill, a black guillemot, a Lapland longspur, 11 snow buntings, and more than 50 horned larks. Lakeville: A survey of the Cumberland Farm fields included a Cooper's hawk, a rough-legged hawk, two snowy owls, and about five each of red-tailed hawk, northern harriers, and short-eared owls. There were at least three great horned owls and one eastern screech owl calling along the roads bordering the fields. For more information or to report sightings, call 781-259-8805 or go to www. massaudubon.

org. Here's what you can do: Report a missing paper Put your delivery on hold while on vacation Edit your account information Update delivery instructions Choose payment plans '5 You can also take advantage of GlobeReader to have the news delivered straight to your desktop. Access your Globe account online: bostong lobe.comsubscr iber ie Boston 6lobe All 4 digits $525 First 3 $147 Last 3 $147 MASS CASH Sat. 12-22-23-24-34 Fri. 08-10-17-19-28.