In many Florida resort hotels, LED lighting systems from Axiom NZ, a global manufacturer of LED lighting systems, are being used to protect sea turtles from dying. Axiom NZ Amber Sea Turtle Lighting products are being used at the W Hotel in Miami Beach, the Eden Roc Hotel and Spa in Miami Beach, and the Marriott Crystal Shores resort in Marco Island, to name a few.

Exar Corporation yesterday announced the XRP7620, a 4 channel, I2C controlled LED driver with independent software adjustable channel current control.

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., (TAEC) has expanded its lineup of compact, high-efficiency white light emitting diodes (LEDs) with three devices in PLCC-2 packages in daylight (or cool) white and two warm whites. These white LEDs are among the brightest white LEDs in Toshiba's current LED product line in this form factor.

Progressive Cooling Solutions is taking a Russian technology for keeping satellite electronics cool and bringing it down to earth to cool LEDs. The US-based company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Siemens Technology-to-Business to mesh two technologies – micro loop heat pipes developed by Russian scientists, and a "silicon wick”, which is a silicon membrane with pores about 5 microns wide and 500 microns deep, developed by company founder and CTO Ahmed Shuja while at the University of Cincinnati.

The Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University and Universal Display Corp. recently announced a breakthrough in advancing displays with organic light-emitting diodes.

Labsphere and Orb Optronix, two light measurement companies both based in the U.S., have announced a collaboration to accelerate the development of LED measurement instruments. The two companies say they will cooperate on the development of a broad range of new LED, display and light metrology products. Also, selected Orb Optronix instruments for LED testing will be manufactured at Labsphere’s New Hampshire facility.

Five Light-emitting diode (LED) corporate sponsors have recently teamed with the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) at the University of California-Davis to hold an LED design contest. In the contest, 28 student participants were required to build working prototypes of new products employing LEDs in a quarter-long course.

Cree, Inc. announced yesterday that it has signed a definitive agreement with RFHIC Corporation (Suwon, Korea) for Cree to supply GaN-on-SiC transistors to RFHIC for their GaN HEMT amplifier product families.

Wavien, Inc., a U.S.-based lighting provider, recently announced the introduction of its highly efficient "Premien" white LED technology for front projector applications. The output efficiency of the patented Premien technology is up to two times higher than competing LED technologies, with no reduction in lifetime.

In Pennsylvania, the U.S., Perkasie and Quakertown are the latest municipalities to apply for federal stimulus grants to save energy and money on streetlights. The two boroughs collaborate to apply for a $1.5 million grant from the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority to replace the bulbs in their streetlights with energy-efficient LEDs - light-emitting diodes. Perkasie plans to replace all 880 of its streetlights, and the state grant would cover 75 percent of the $969,675 price tag, said Manager Dan Olpere.

Scientists of the West Virginia University Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, have been developing the next generation of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting that will be much more efficient than anything now on the commercial market. The study was the subject of an initial grant based on IC INOVA’s LED design and funding. A recent memorandum of understanding between the WVU Research Corporation and IC INOVA, a Japanese company, demonstrates their support in the progress of the WVU LED research.

Microsemi Corporation, a manufacturer of analog/mixed signal integrated circuits and semiconductors, just extended its comprehensive line of backlight-driving IC solutions with the production release of the company's LX24132 32-port LED backlight controller and LX23108L 8-port LED driver.

UltraTech's lighted tweezers and mechanical pickup tool have white LEDs built in to help you see what you're grabbing. The LEDs (light-emitting diodes) shed light on hard-to-see places to make the task easier. The tweezers come in three styles, all of which are a little more than 6 inches long. The pickup tool is 24 inches long and can grasp items up to 1 inch across.

At the Society for Information Display’s (SID’s) Display Week 2009 conference in San Antonio, TX, Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas (SMA) announced an expansion to its LED-backlit and touch screen display product lines. Two new TFT-LCDs – one 5.0-inch panel with resistive touch and one 7.0-inch panel – deliver LED backlighting rated at 50,000 hours of operation. Additionally, both panels feature built-in LED drivers, saving engineers time, effort, and expense.

The Peace Bridge, a landmark crossing between United States and Canada, has achieved a dramatic new look with the energy-saving light emitting diode (LED) technology. The $1.2 million project was funded by the federal government's Transportation Enhancement Program, with support from the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority.

UPEK®, a global provider of enterprise and consumer biometric fingerprint solutions, yesterday unveiled its TouchLight™ technology which integrates light emitting diodes (LEDs) for user prompting and feedback directly into the company’s broadly adopted fingerprint sensors. UPEK is demonstrating TouchLight integrated LED technology at the Computex Trade Show in Taipei, Taiwan June 2-6, 2009.

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University and Universal Display Corporation yesterday introduced the first a-Si:H active matrix flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display to be manufactured directly on DuPont Teijin's polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrate.

DuPont Displays Inc announced that it developed new OLED materials designed for coating process. The OLED panel manufactured using DuPont Displays' new material

A new report from Strategies Unlimited says that increasing demand for blue-violet laser diodes, UV LEDs, and other devices will provide significant growth of advanced substrates such as GaN and AlN.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling on May 22, 2009 that rejected Epistar's appeal of the International Trade Commission's (ITC's) interpretation of the claims in Philips Lumileds' U.S. Patent No. 5,008,718 (the '718 patent).

Luminus Devices Inc., developer and manufacturer of PhlatLight LEDs, today announced the appointment of Keith T.S. Ward as its President, Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors.

Eastman Kodak Company has been named by Frost & Sullivan as the recipient of the 2009 OLED Lighting Enabling Technology of the Year Award in the field of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) Solid State Lighting (SSL) Technology. According to Frost & Sullivan, the Enabling Technology of the Year Award is presented to a company that has developed a technology that can benefit or revolutionize the industry.

In Fargo, North Dakota, U.S., the city commission voted 5-0 last week to put an immediate moratorium on LED signs on the premises of business properties. The sign moratorium was sought by the Hawthorne Neighborhood Association. The neighborhood group has been against plans by Steven Stremick of Select Financial to put a cube-shaped light-emitting-diode sign at the corner of 13th Avenue South and University Drive.

Epistar Corp, Taiwan‘s largest LED (light-emitting diodes) manufacturer, won its appeal of a patent-infringement case in which Lumileds, the LED unit of Royal Philips Electronics, was trying to block its chips from the US market. The Appeals court lifted an import ban that had been imposed on LED chips made by Epistar.

At the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington Thursday, the Cowboys turned on the world's two largest high-definition LED video displays, each 160 feet wide and 72 feet high.

Albeo Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of white-LED general illumination lighting systems, announced that it has been granted two design patents, D592786 and D592785, for its award winning C-Series High-Bay general illumination light fixture. The patents cover Albeo’s unique designs that allow Albeo fixtures to run cooler at higher efficiencies with longer lifetimes.

Greenlight Initiative, a New York headquartered LED-lighting sales and solutions provider, announced yesterday that it has completed qualification of the LED-based replacement lamp product line from Array™ Lighting. With testing and evaluation complete, Greenlight and Array have concluded a national and municipal/public works accounts sales agreement for Array's full line including PAR30, PAR16, MR16 and GU10-type LED replacement lamp products.

Power Integrations, a manufacturer of high-voltage integrated circuits for energy-efficient power conversion, just released a new engineering report (DER-212) describing a 92%-efficient power supply for LED streetlight applications.

Scientists have developed a method to make lettuce darker and healthier using ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Steven Britz of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his colleagues used low-power LEDs that exposed lettuce to ultraviolet B (UVB) light for 43 hours. The lettuce was noticeably darker than plants not exposed to the UVB. They have not quantified this effect, but the lettuce darkening increased with the intensity of the light. Darker lettuce, like spinach, is known to be more nutrient dense than its lighter counterparts, such as iceberg.

San Jose, Calif., plans to convert 125 lights in the city’s Hillview North neighborhood by June 2009 in its second LED streetlight pilot project. The new streetlights will use energy efficient LED lamps equipped with the locally based Echelon’s power line networking technology and segment controllers. The LED Streetlights connected with the Echelon’s intelligent controls for smart networks can help reduce energy and maintenance costs while improving light quality, decreasing light pollution and providing increased safety, according to the company.