Research

Observation data produced by the Planck Satellite Mission suggests the universe may not be flat, as popularly believed by scientists, but a sphere.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) recently released the results of a U.S. Department of Energy-funded study, published in Lighting Research & Technology, that validates color preference specification criteria based on American National Standard Institute and Illuminating Engineering Society TM-30-18. The results support TM-30 Annex E recommendations that allow lighting professionals to communicate different color rendition goals (preference, vividness, and fidelity) with far greater precision than prior methods.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Building Technologies Office (BTO) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) (DE-FOA-0002160) to seek broad stakeholder input to inform the strategic direction of the DOE lighting research and development (R&D) portfolio. The purpose of the RFI is to better understand how lighting research goals can be refined to reflect evolving technology needs and inform related R&D activities.

Researchers in the U.S. and Spain recently announced they have discovered a new property of light, called self-torque. They found that light can be twisted.

Electrical contractors consider themselves highly influential in lighting-equipment selection for both new construction and retrofit projects. That’s one key finding from the 2019 CII Lighting Trends Survey, which ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR conducted using the 1,000 members on its Subscriber Research Panel.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently released findings of a new study on handheld flicker meters. The study found that handheld flicker meters today are capable of providing performance nearing that of a benchtop meter in a controlled environment.

On behalf of DOE’s SSL Program, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is planning to conduct a study examining dirt depreciation and other optical changes occurring in LED street or area lights over long-term periods of performance, potentially approaching their full life cycles. For the study, PNNL seeks LED street or area lights that, ideally, are nearing the end of their anticipated life; however, any luminaire with more than 10,000 cumulative hours of operation will be considered.

A new University of Exeter study found that attaching LED lights to gillnets used in commercial fishing can reduce the number of seabirds accidentally caught and killed by more than 85 percent.

In April 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released its final GATEWAY report documenting the performance of LED luminaires in a high-temperature outdoor lighting environment over four years. DOE’s GATEWAY program, which evaluates projects demonstrating LED capability, studied the results of a retrofit of quartz metal halide area lighting along a 7.2-mile stretch in the Yuma, Arizona Border Patrol Area between the U.S. and Mexico. Temperatures in this area can top 100 degrees Fahrenheit at sunset.