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Facing a pivotal federal investigation into Louisiana’s relationship with petro-chemical companies, the state’s attorney general hired lawyers who were simultaneously representing one of the main corporations at the center of the investigation, documents reveal.

The revelations, contained in documents released under public records requests, have led to allegations of a major conflict of interest and come just weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] dropped its civil rights investigation.

Internal emails, contracts and payments, show that the office of the attorney general, Jeff Landry, hired two lawyers to enter closed-door negotiations with the EPA during the 14-month civil rights investigation. But John King and Tim Hardy were also representing the Taiwanese chemicals firm Formosa in separate litigation, challenging a decision to revoke the company’s state air permits. (Moran and Sneath 2023).

In the 1980s, Formosa Plastics Corporation purchased financially struggling petrochemical plants in Delaware, Texas, and Louisiana. The company subsequently shifted its operations to Texas and Louisiana, where a competitive bidding process ensued between the two states, both of which were known for industry-friendly policies (Tubilewicz 2021). As political scientist Tubilewicz (2021, 16) has argued, the politics surrounding Formosa's investments in these states were not purely motivated by profit but were also shaped by the ongoing struggles of sub-state actors such as politicians and NGOs over issues of internationalization and representation in global affairs.

An example of this can be seen in Formosa's attempt to build a rayon fiber plant in Louisiana's St. John Parish in the late 1990s, an area also known as "Cancer Alley." Protests broke out due to concerns about massive tax exemptions, displacement of Black residents, and the plant's location on the historic Whitney Plantation (Tubilewicz 2021, 11). However, the project was eventually abandoned due to declining market demand and delays. In addition, the local St. John Governor was indicted for illegal industrial rezoning of land around the plantation and receiving $200,000 in real estate commission (Tubilewicz 2021, 11).

Smart autoalarm guardrail is designed for helpping people emergency contact and remind the other drivers when car accident happen in remote area. People will drive on some remote area, or late night. If car accident happens, might be no one know the accident is happen. This design is help the litigant automatically make a emergency call, and send the location through the GPS when the car is crash the guardrail. As well as, it can turn on/flash the light within the accident area to warn the other drivers. 

Smart guardrail is concept design by Yuguo chen and Changlin He, who are from School of Design, Hunan University in China. 

This design could help people in an unknow emergency situation, for example, the driver pass out when the traffic accident happen, and this design can help people to save life. However, I think this concept design might be cost a lot if it is applied into real life, because it means there are lots of guardrail need to install this system, and the government also need to prepare another extra fee for repair the guardrail after every accident. 

The smart guardrail is designed to be used in some remote area and highway. 

Smart Guardrail is autoalrm and could be send location to the nearset emergency centre by GPS when the car crash into the guardrail. As well as the warning light within the area will be swithched on to avoid the potential sencond accident. The system is design to install into the highway guardrail, and use the circuit to make the system work. Therefore, the materials might be include electrical wire and circuit, and also plastic caution lights.

This concept design is supposed to install on the highway guardrail and work automatically in a pubilc area, therefore there is no specifically skill need to learn. 

Smart Guardrail is considered as a good concept design, because it can be solve the emergency problem for traffic accident in some situation. This design is applied a common materials and method to solve problem. It is a small change and might make a big influenced. But the design could be used or not is depend on the cost would be proportional to the value or not.

This concept design is create a market which is within more functions and technologies for guardrail. In the existing market, there are some good design highway guardrail, such as EZY-guard smart guardrail. Most of the existing product are applied outter shapes and physical structures rather than some electrical technology. Compare to the existing products, this concept design is more challenged by the cost.