Program Shubert

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Natural Full Spectrum Light Boosts Health and Led's Will Boost Communications

In recent years research scientists have been taking a closer look at the lighting in our homes, offices and vehicles.  They are seeing potential for ways of improving health and finding new means of electronic communication through LED’s and natural full spectrum lighting.
Though this will not happen tomorrow, experts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., an academic home for lighting research, are confident that this burgeoning field of study will soon reap outstanding rewards.
According to lighting engineer, E. Fred Schubert, a new era of "smart" light sources is just beginning. "We are looking at lighting systems that provide more than lighting," says Shubert. Shubert is talking about light-emitting diodes, or LED’s. Most people know them as being quite small, like the lights that form numbers on digital clocks or blink on answering machines; however recent technological advances have increased their luminosity significantly.  These increases have made it possible for LED’s to illuminate swimming pools and serve as traffic signals, and with time these low-cost light sources will perform even more tasks.
Though LED’s offer energy savings when compared to standard lighting, Schubert and other researchers are more excited about the communications that they may provide. The latter is because LED’s can be made to blink so fast that a person doesn't notice, but a receiving device can. And that, Schubert says, opens the door to using lights for electronic communication as well as illumination.
Of course, fiber optic cables already transmit lots of data with light signals. But Schubert is talking about things like:

• Brake lights that tell a closely following car to stop

• Headlights that tell a red stop light to turn green

• Road signs that communicate warnings to specific cars.

• Room lights that link your computer to the Internet, avoiding Wi-Fi signals that can be pirated.

Schubert said such uses depend on overcoming some basic technical barriers, like making them more powerful and energy-efficient. He states, "I think we're looking at maybe a timeframe of the next five to twenty years."
Meanwhile, Mariana Figueiro, program director at Rensselaer's Lighting Research Center and head of a committee on light and human health for the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, believes that lighting in offices and schools could be improved to help people stay healthy and productive, by acting on their internal body clocks. "Light isn't just for vision anymore," says Figueiro, “Light cues, especially blue light, help keep the 24-hr biological clock on its daily cycle.†Figueiro indicated that studies suggest such possibilities as seasonal depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbances; and have even gone so far as suggest that maybe even cancer, especially breast cancer could be influenced by the lighting used in buildings.
Be on the lookout for more breaking news related to the use of LED’s and natural full spectrum lighting being used in buildings.

About the Author

Denny is fascinated by light, and all things associated with it.

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