Peter Scott, CEO of Fern-Howard Lighting, was welcomed as Lighting Industry Association (LIA) President by departing President, Alasdair McRury, Managing Director of Holophane Europe during the LIA’s Annual Lunch held on May10, 2016.

Spartanburg City Council on Monday night approved design concepts for a US $1 million public art project that will light up neighborhoods later this year.  The funding is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. In 2015, the City of Spartanburg was selected as one of four cities nationwide to take part in Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge, a new program to support temporary public art projects that celebrate creativity, enhance urban identity, encourage public-private partnerships, and drive economic development.

Amerlux recently supplied its Avista LED light engines as part of a major retrofit project in the downtown Los Angeles  area in California, U.S. Since the late 1920s, GE lamps were used to provide light for the streets of downtown LA during its modern revitalization. The Bureau of Street Lighting reported that more than half of its streetlights have already been retrofitted to LED, including 600 fixtures with Amerlux Avista light engines. This retrofit project saves the taxpayers of Los Angeles almost 80% in energy costs and provides better color rendering for enhanced visibility, safety and security throughout the community.

The combined shipments of smartwatches and smart bands will reach 7.5 million units this year, and 90% of which will be equipped with optical sensor components used for pulse rate monitoring, according to the 2016 UV LED and IR LED Application Markets Report by LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. Shipments of smartwatches and smart bands together will total 170 million units by 2020, and all of them are expected to incorporate optical sensor components. A common sensor system that measure pulse rate and blood oxygen concentration is the reflective photoplethymography (PPG) sensor. Due to opportunities in health and fitness trends, the reflective PPG sensor is gradually becoming an integral part of most wearable devices. Additionally, wearable optical sensors that can track pulse rate and other health-related data have huge potential in the home healthcare market.

Universal Display Corporation (Nasdaq: OLED), enabling energy-efficient displays and lighting with its UniversalPHOLED® technology and materials, today announced that it will showcase the Company’s latest advances at the Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week 2016 International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition being held from May 22-27 in San Francisco, California. At Booth #604 in the Moscone Convention Center, the Company will exhibit its phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) Color Board from May 24-26. The Color Board demonstrates a selection of UDC’s high-performing, energy-efficient commercial and developmental red, yellow, green, light blue and blue UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent material systems.

G. P. Trading Concern, national distributor of Opple LED lighting in Nepal, initiated a noble cause this April 2016. On behalf of the entire company, a group of 16 employees decided to visit Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children (HRDC), a leading hospital with specialization in orthopedic and reconstructive surgery, treatment of cerebral palsy and management of spine problems.

Ahead of InfoComm 2016, Sony has today announced the launch of its CLEDIS™ display technology, a new large-scale canvas solution that builds on Sony’s self-emitting display capabilities, but with ultrafine LEDs as the light source, to deliver a single high-resolution image at an unprecedented scale. The solution has been designed to redefine the landscape for large-scale display and visual entertainment by delivering a totally new visual experience not possible today with even the highest-end conventional LED array.

Fulham Co., Inc., a leading supplier of lighting components and electronics for commercial and specialty applications, today announced that three models of its AC-powered ThoroLED LED Retrofit Kits have been tested and certified as ENERGY STAR® Luminaire 2.0 compliant.

How many inventors does it take to change the future of a lightbulb? GE Lighting partnered with the maker movement magazine Make: and the hardware-hacking communityHackster to find out. Their crowdsourcing competition, called Lights for Life Challenge, invited inventors to take LEDs in new and unexpected directions. There’s one condition, though: The solutions must include voice commands.

Power management company Eaton, a 2016 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year, today announced that its light-emitting diode (LED) products received three prestigious Next Generation LuminairesTM (NGL) Solid-State Lighting (SSL) Design Competition awards and two LIGHTFAIR® International (LFI) Innovation Awards®. The awards were presented during ceremonies at LIGHTFAIR International on April 26.

A Los Angeles-based team launched a campaign on Kickstarter for its iPhone 6/6s selfie case that equips with high quality lights. The campaign pledged to raise US $50,000 for the flash iPhone case as it has secured US $10,550 so far.

Japanese manufacturer Dai Nippon Printing will triple the output of evaporation masks, a core component in OLED panel production, to take advantage of estimated growth demands from smartphone panel applications and others, reported Nikkei.

Authorities of City of Waterloo in Canada will upgrade its current LED streetlights to smart LED streetlights adding features of analyzing traffic conditions, detecting snowfall and connecting to gas and water utility meters, reported Waterloo Chronicle.

Exposure to bright light could affect your metabolism, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.  

The City of West Jordan in Utah, U.S., is replacing approximately 5,000 traditional streetlights with LED (light emitting diode) lights, which provide improved illumination at a reduced operating cost – and shrink the city’s carbon footprint. 

Digital Lumens, the market leader in intelligent lighting systems, announced that it has partnered with Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation. The partnership enables Schneider Electric customers to leverage the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) across a variety of building environments via Digital Lumens’ sensor-based connected lighting and next-generation analytics suite.

EVERLIGHT ELECTRONICS, a leading player in the global LED and optoelectronics industry, presents four new ceramic high reflective packaged high power automotive LEDs with a Golden Lead Frame in four different colors White, PC-Amber, Red and Super Red, according to their preferred exterior applications.

RayVio Corp., an advanced health and hygiene company, today announced that it has launched a new series of ultraviolet (UV) LEDs with the highest power output available from a small surface mount device (SMD) footprint. RayVio’s leading technology enables the UV disinfection of water and environments by fostering a new generation of powerful and portable health and hygiene devices.

SUSS MicroTec, a global supplier of equipment and process solutions for the semiconductor industry and related markets, has launched the LI Series - a new Surface Laser Imaging platform as pre- announced on May 4, 2016.

The AIA Convention 2016 takes place this week in Philadelphia from May 19-21. The architecture and design event offers an impressive lineup of celebrity speakers, educational city tours, workshops and seminars and nearly 800 exhibitors. This year’s theme is “Where technology and creativity come together to create what’s possible”.

As cities across the world turn to LED streetlights to reduce carbon emissions, it might not be as cost effective as thought, said Eric Spiegel, CEO of Siemens U.S..

RayVio, an advanced UVC LED vendor, announced that it has closed new funding rounds of in total $26 million led by IPV Capital and Tsing Capital. RayVio will use the new funding to scale production to meet global consumer demand for protection against germs in water and environments. RayVio’s powerful Ultraviolet (UV) LED technology enables compelling new health and hygiene products, such as point-of-use water disinfection, and creates new markets and revenue streams for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners around the world.

In written comments filed with the U.S. Department of Energy by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), U.S. lighting manufacturers reaffirmed their position that consumers should have multiple options when selecting the type of light bulbs to purchase. NEMA's comments took issue with requirements in a Department of Energy (DOE) proposed energy efficiency rule aimed at forcing the exclusive adoption of LED bulbs, thereby denying consumer choice and disrupting the ongoing and rapid market transition to energy-efficient lighting.

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy have awarded three Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants targeting advances in solid-state lighting (SSL) technology. These Phase I grants will explore the technical merit and commercial potential of different innovative concepts or technologies that are expected to contribute to the achievement of the price and performance goals described in DOE’s SSL R&D Plan.

The Lighting Industry Association’s (LIA) new state of the art, 12,500 sq ft purpose built Laboratories have bid successfully and are undertaking testing as part of LightingEurope’s Compliant Lighting Initiative.

Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) extends its industry-leading street lighting portfolio, delivering more performance and efficiency breakthroughs with the next generation of its new Cree® XSP HO Series. Leveraging the innovations from the existing Cree XSP Series LED street light platform, the new XSP HO Series features an increased level of lumens and up to 25 percent more LPW over the standard XSP Series. Now available in new packages up to 18,523 lumens and 116 LPW, the new XSP HO Series is ideal for any roadway, enabling better light for new applications ranging from collector roads to highways.

Barberán will demonstrate Phoseon's LED curing solutions with optimized coatings from Sherwin-Williams at the upcoming Xylexpo exhibition for woodworking (Hall 1 - Stand G02 G10 M01). Phoseon's FireJet™ FJ200 light sources are utilized for the full cure LED clear coating, and the FireEdge™ FE200 light sources will be used for the top coat finish in-line on Barberán's Jetmaster digital printing and finishing line.

Thomas Research Products has introduced a series of low wattage LED drivers designed for use in outdoor fixtures. These models include phase dimming control and are hazardous location rated. Thomas Research Products manufactures SSL power and control solutions.

Lumileds launches its second generation LUXEON CoB Compact Range LEDs, which feature an efficacy and output boost of up to 16% over its previous generation arrays. The new product line reinforces Lumileds leading position in chip on board technology by enabling the most cost effective solid state PAR, GU-10 and MR-16 lamps for retail, hospitality and home lighting applications.

Embedded systems display specialist Intelligent Display Solutions (IDS) launched a new series of OLED display panels at this year's H/WExpo, the hardware developers’ conference