Students racing over curving roads in a video-game simulation hope to help scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center (LRC) answer a serious question: Do current lighting standards mislead us about the efficiency of roadway, parking lot, and security lighting? Lighting efficiency is widely calculated as lumens per watt of energy, explains Mark Rea, LRC director. The lumen, a measurement defined in the 1920s, is based on the response in bright light of the fovea, the part of the retina that contains cone photoreceptors. It's responsible for central, high-acuity vision. However, parts of the retina containing rod-shaped photoreceptors also are important in low-light conditions and for peripheral vision. As a result, lumens per watt delivers an accurate efficiency measure for tasks done in bright light, but is less accurate for such tasks as night driving, which requires good peripheral vision in low light. In research sponsored jointly by General Electric, OSRAM Sylvania, Philips, and the Department of Energy, the LRC is conducting experiments with the driving simulator to measure the reaction of the participants under varying lighting conditions. The information gained could help industry produce new lighting systems that are more efficient, Rea believes, since they would take into account the complex responses of the human eye. Phone Rea at (518) 276-8701 (E)
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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