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Shuji Nakamura Awarded the 2006 Millennium Prize
Mictian writes "University of California professor Shuji Nakamura, the japanese inventor of the bright green, white and blue GaN LEDs and a blue laser, has been awarded the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize. While blue LEDs are considered cool and thus needful things by most nerds, Nakamura adapted his blue LEDs to make a blue laser in the mid 90s. The next generation optical storage formats, HD-DVD and BluRay, are of course both based on blue laser. Also, his white LEDS need far less energy than normal incandescent lamps and can thus provide plenty of opportunity for energy-saving in the industrialized world. But probably the most significant future application for Shuji Nakamura's invention comes in the form of sterilizing drinking water, since the the water purification process can be made cheaper and more efficient with the use of ultraviolet LEDs. This can improve the lives and health of tens of millions people in developing countries."
maybe someday I can microwave food with some leds instead of that big, ugly magnetron?
I want them implanted in my fingers so I can find light switches in the dark.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
...for whom the patent system was created. All of his works are absolutely ubiquitous now in our world.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I hate those blue LEDs that are on every damn bit of electronics these days. So many manufacturers don't bother to tone it down, so you have all these power indicators that can light up the damn room. Especially irritating if they're flashing, like when my laptop is suspended.
Oh, and backlit cellphone keypads, blue? Worst idea ever. Blue is the about the hardest color to get your eyes to focus on.
So many designers have no sense of aesthetics. They just go with the trend du jour.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
...which is phenomenal and well-deserving of the prize, but why the comparison to incandescent bulbs for large-scale energy savings? Flourescent lightss, including full-spectrum lights that produce better quality light than most incadescent bulbs, are much more efficient than incandescents, too, for their output; my understanding is that White LED lights are now somewhat more efficient even than flourescents, which is the real reason they offer a big step forward in terms of large-scale energy savings (plus, they are much easier to make very small, which is good for lots of applications where flourescent lights aren't really well suited, but that's not going to be the source of enormous energy savings.)
Shuji Nakamura got boned by his employer Nichia, and it's got to feel sweet for him that he's getting recognized for his work anyway.
"The court actually valued Nakamura's contribution to the company at 60.4 billion yen, based on Nichia's sales and the revenue that it might theoretically have received from licensing a key patent relating to the epitaxial growth of LED material."
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/news/2/1/5/1
A few years ago I invested in a white LED headlight/torch for when I would go camping.
I got almost 2 years out of a set of 3 AAA batteries, the light itself provided excellent light at night and stayed bright up until the batteries were noticably dying.
It was one of the most practical investments I ever made.
"But probably the most significant future application for Shuji Nakamura's invention comes in the form of sterilizing drinking water, since the the water purification process can be made cheaper and more efficient with the use of ultraviolet LEDs. This can improve the lives and health of tens of millions people in developing countries."
This is absurd. No one with even the slightest clue about such things would ever make such a statement. Nakamura's blue and UV GaN/InGaN/AlInGaN leds and laser diodes are great but they will not be used for this purpose. The all emit in the near UV (350 nm or greater) this sucks for killing microorganisims. You want to cause a kink in a bacteria's dna by dimerizing adjacent thymine molecules, thus inhibiting replication. The germicidal efficacy curve which describes this phenomenon peaks at 260nm way below any LED with any kind of reasonable efficiency. A tenuous mercury plasma in a quartz bulb however, will blast out something like over 80% of its light right at this wavelength! There is no way you are going to beat the hugely efficient and dirt cheap germicidal uv lamps already on the market any time soon.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Time to call the Cheat Commandos and ROCK, ROCK ON!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
All the new traffic lights in Victoria (Aus) are built with LED's now. You can tell the difference -- because they use the same switch gear as before, the time lag built in to the control systems to let the incandescents glow down manifests as a few milliseconds of all-lamps-off. Takes a moment to get used to it, but you're very aware of lights changing -- I think it's safer that way, myself. I think it's done with filters over those brilliant white LEDs. We also use variable speed limit signs built with switching arrays of LEDs in crowded shopping areas, used to switch speeds according to traffic conditions & time of day. So there's a good application in use today -- lowering road aggro and maybe even saving a life or two, while lowering energy costs at the same time. High-class geekery, that, and one worth the round of applause.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Duct tape, my friend. Duct tape. Cut it into little tiny bunny shapes and paste it over the indicators. Problem solved.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
To be clear, she's a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and not University of California, which is usually associated with Berkeley, being the 1st UC in the state.
HD Trailers
Actually, the recent energy bill banned the manufacture and import of parts for incandescent signals in the United States as of January 1, 2006. Existing stocks may be used until they run out, but the upgrade to LED signal tech makes sense. One of my co-workers is a councilman for a small municipality with one traffic signal. The recently converted it to LED. He forwarded us the e-mail from the Public Works department telling that the power bill for the signal was $30 for a month of LED instead of the $150 per month with incandescent. One signal will save the town $1200 a year. Multiply that cost and energy savings by the number of traffic signals in the United States and you'll see why LED traffic signals are catching on.
Interestingly enough, white LEDs (as opposed to RGB LEDs) are usually either blue or UV LEDs with a phosphor coating, much like a fluorescent light bulb's. So the LED itself is in fact monochromatic, or as nearly so as LEDs tend to be. The mechanism behind photon emission in LEDs (and diode lasers, which are nearly the same thing) strongly favors emission of photons clustered very tightly around a single energy level.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Bare moments after they hit the market in the form of flashlights, I ordered at a ludicrously expensive bleeding-edge price the veritable Alpha-Male of the species; a phallic light-thrower which takes three 'D' cells and powers an array of 10 white LEDs. It's super-bright and it will run continuously for something like 3 solid months. Who needs a sports car?
--And because I am confident in my masculinity, I also bought and primarily use a much smaller one with a single LED. Oh god, it's sweet! Super-bright, it runs forever on a triple 'A' cell. I use that thing all the time. Not like the cute but ultimately annoying mini-mag, which ran down after twenty minutes. --I always felt slightly stressed while using that thing for any work. Instead of focusing 100% of my attention on the task it was illuminating, I'd have a little part of my mind worrying, "Oh no! My flashlight is going to die soon!"
Of course, with the far superior LED flashlight replacement, I now find myself distracted spending a sizable percentage of my brain thinking, "Wow! This is just the coolest flashlight on the planet!"
Indeed. White LEDs are the first bit of new technology which actually made me sit up and say, "Holy Awesomeness, Batman! I NEED one of those for my belt!" since. . , well, I can't actually remember the last bit of engineering which I absolutely had to run out and buy.
Oooh, scratch that. I DO remember. It was one of those extendable lightsaber toys when they first hit the market. They were painfully neat in an almost perfect kind of way. (That 8 inches of saber sticking out of the handle when the blade was retracted was dumb, but whatever). I broke mine open and installed extra lightsaber sounds, activated by a handy button so I could deflect pretend blaster bolts at a thumb press. Sooo proud of that. (Hm. Another phallic device. I wonder what's up with that. .
A close runner-up invention in terms of coolness is the flatscreen monitor. They're exceptionally wonderful, (bright, no EM radiation, they don't make any electronic whining sound on the upper end of audio perception, and they're, well, FLAT!), except they didn't hit the market in an exciting burst of newness. They sort of arrived and sucked, then got slowly better and more affordable over a 15 year period. Can you imagine how exciting they would have been if they just suddenly showed up with no warning?
I guess the MP3 was another really neat innovation. Heck. That drove the world stark-raving-giddy for almost two years. Remember Napster? Sheesh! The world is still trying to recover its senses.
And before that. . . Well, I guess the CD was pretty darn cool. The recordable option was exciting. That changed the world as well. As did PacMan and Space Invaders down at the K-Mart entrance during the 80's.
The Mountain Bike was pretty great, too. And so was the mini-Leatherman folding pliers. (The really small one which folds up to the size of a zippo.) I still have and my original pair bought when Leatherman was a new company back in the early nineties and use it regularly.
But none of those things excited me quite like the white LED. White LEDs are beautiful in their simplicity.
The only thing that annoys me about any of this is that I'm getting excited about weenie technology. --The MIC keeps all the really cool inventions from ever being released. We only get these safe little inventions which can't upset the balance of power and money distribution in the world. Ah well. At least we have cool flashlights!
-FL