We’re probably all familiar with the environmental maxim “think globally, act locally.” Well, in the spirit of environmentalism, supporting local economies, and enjoying summer’s finest organic offerings, I propose spending more time at your local farmers’ market. Local Harvest has compiled a farmers’ market directory that allows you to search for markets by zip code [...]

Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a prototype camera phone microscope that may prove instrumental in identifying pathogens in the field. The CellScope, as it is known, could enable scientists and health workers to inexpensively and efficiently diagnose diseases in areas far removed from hospitals and doctors’ offices. It could also help reduce the time [...]

For as long as incandescent bulbs have been the industry standard, we have viewed lighting as an entirely disposable necessity that poses an inconvenience in its relatively frequent maintenance requirements and creates a safety hazard upon rough handling. The first major reimagining of the lamp came in the form of the compact fluorescent light. For [...]

It all started with NASA’s use of LEDs to promote the growth of vegetation in space. Next followed a few studies by Whelan et al. that examined the use of LEDs in accelerating skin healing. One study found that, much like lasers, an array of near-infrared (NIR) LEDs can stimulate the mitochondria of cells to [...]

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are utilizing one of the fastest supercomputers in the world at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to model the rapid climate change that occurred in the Bølling-Allerød interstadial. During the Bølling-Allerød, the last bout of global warming, Earth’s temperature and [...]

Ed Miliband, Britain’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary, announced a plan today that will require 40% of Britain’s power demand to be met by low carbon sources by 2020. The new plan looks to “clean” coal, nuclear, solar, tidal, and wind power to accomplish this goal and help mitigate global climate change. The British government [...]

When you think of London, what’s the first thing you think of? Sunshine continually beaming upon vast expanses of unpopulated desert? Wait, that sounds like Africa or the Middle East… Well, what if the intense solar energy that greets the earth in these regions could be transported to Europe? Today in Munich a group of [...]

Like most lighting manufacturers, Seesmart™ assigns each of its products a color temperature expressed in Kelvin, the SI base unit for temperature. For LEDs and other non-incandescent light sources, color temperature is determined by matching the apparent color of the light emitted to a heated black body radiator, a theoretical object that absorbs all incident [...]