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Comment Re:Where i live... (Score 1) 65

Where I live I doubt anyone saved much money going to LED street lights. For the first few years LEDs burned out quite often. Then with the power savings, they put in way more street lighting (part of why cities are getting brighter and brighter). Personally I much prefer sodium lighting. It's so much easier on my eyes.

Around the home, LEDs are things I love to hate. They are just engineered to fail and will never last the 20 years some claimed. I am constantly replacing LED screw-in bulbs. Sometimes the COBs themselves fail because they are over driven. Often the potted driver fails. Have I really saved any money with LEDs? Who knows.

Comment Re:Where i live... (Score 2) 65

The funny thing is there's not that much difference in the raw bulb efficiencies - LPS is slightly lower, but not dramatically. But LPS have more fixture losses (the bulbs are omnidirectional), ballast losses, inefficient dimming (and only to slight degrees) for morning/evening, and so on. LED's high CRI (vs. LPS's virtually nonexistent CRI) can sometimes mean you can use less light, too. In practice, you can use something like 30-40% the electricity with LED streetlamps as with LPS, despite the raw bulb figures not being very different.

But no question that LED is much worse for astronomy. LPS was almost a pure spectral line, very easy to exclude. White LEDs use phosphors and deliver a broad spectrum white (apart from the source's blue peak). Pretty much the worst spectrum you could have apart from incandescent. : It kind of sucks that we have to use phosphors in the first place, as they're wasteful - but unfortunately, LEDs have a "green gap"; in the green spectrum, existing tech has a dramatic drop in output and efficiency (and corresponding increase in price) - while green is what our eyes see best. There's still ongoing work to fill it, but it's been a slog. If we could skip the phosphor and just have a mix of different coloured LEDs, the fixtures would be even more efficient, and it would be much easier for astronomers to filter (esp. if the frequencies were standardized)

Comment Re:"could" (Score 1) 154

that benefit will never happen

You know that arctic apples and innate potatoes both use the exact same PPO silencing tech, and have been on the market for years? Innate potatoes also contain less asparagine, the amino acid that turns into the carcinogen acrylamide when frying.

Do also remember that while these are "GMO", they're not transgenic. They simply have genes shut off - no new genes.

Comment Re:Browning in the case of bananas... (Score 1) 154

It is not "purely cosmetic in commercial situations". Bananas are one of the most wasted food products on the planet. You very much should care about reducing that. And bananas have largely been locked out of the ready-to-eat market by PPO-related browning because they turn to brown sludge unless you ruin their texture/flavour by treating them in citric/ascorbic acid or sulfur dioxide.

And once again, this has nothing to do with whether the bananas are old or not. Browning is an entirely different process than ripening. PPO vs. ethylene. Entirely different physiological responses. Get rid of PPO, and it still continues the normal aging process - pectin methylesterases and cellulases still break down the cell walls, amylase still converts starches to sugars (which then slowly ferment if given enough time), etc. No impact to normal aging. The impact is to rapid spoilage after peeling.

Comment Re:Won't someone think of the Banana bread? (Score 1) 154

Once again, for the love of God, read and understand the article: this is NOT ABOUT WHETHER THE BANANAS ARE OLD OR NOT. It's NOT ABOUT WHETHER THEY'RE RIPE OR NOT. It's about THE BROWNING THAT HAPPENS WITHIN HOURS OF YOU REMOVING THE PEEL. Caused by an enzyme in bananas that is generally harmful to the human diet anyway (degrades vitamin C and polyphenols and reduces protein digestibility).

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