Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for June 12, 2020. Happy Friday, everyone! We are in the midst of a heat wave, a Santa Ana, here in southern California. And we experienced our first wind-driven wildfires of the season in San Diego yesterday. Fortunately, the first responders brought them quickly under control. We will mark another distanced weekend of the hot variety in this case, but I am looking forward to the return of professional golf to TV.
Many of you will be hearing from us about another survey in the coming days. It’s a very simple one. Please take a couple of minutes and complete it. It will aid our editorial planning.
Our June issue content is now available for you in HTML format. Of course, subscribers can peruse the entire issue using our digital magazine platform and get seamless access to our archives. We post the HTML versions so that they are easily found via search.
My column from the issue was on the collapsing value of brands. I would make that observation today about brands in many business sectors. But nowhere is it more true than in solid-state lighting (SSL). If you haven’t seen it, give it a read and let me know what you think.
How would you let me know, you ask? Well, you can always email me at the address listed down below. But we also have added the ability for readers to comment right on the site. Now I’m not completely at ease telling you about commenting on our site. Some of you may remember that we twice had robust participation in comments only to have transitions in content management systems wipe out some truly valuable insights from you the reader audience. I was even accused of removing the commenting capability at one point because I was on the wrong end of an outdoor lighting argument. I assure you that I would have never taken such a feature away no matter how poorly my arguments were holding up. You will have to register or sign in once to leave a comment. Then access should be seamless. Amazingly, we got our first comments before we even had access to the commenting system ourselves.
We have a couple of interesting articles for you to close the week. We don’t cover a lot of pure research in terms of news. But the vaunted team at the University of California at Santa Barbara published two new research papers in technical journals within a matter of days. One of the articles describes an LED architecture with yellow and blue quantum wells that doesn’t need a phosphor to generate white light. The second was focused on light extraction and beam control.
And we have an interesting life-science story on the use of submerged LED luminaires in salmon farming applications. The lighting keeps the fish in a growth stage and minimizes sea lice issues — making the product top quality — and boosts yield and profits for farmers. The techniques can also be used with other fast-growing species.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 748-6785, [email protected]