Interesting article. LED's and the circadian system.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/14/surviving-the-darkness.html?from=rss
One way to keep the miners on a daily routine is to simulate light and dark periods during each day. The men have already designated light and dark areas in the roughly half-mile-long tunnel where they are living, but the battery-powered lamps in the lighted areas may not be bright enough to trick the men's internal clocks into thinking it's daytime. "If you have really dim light, you can still read a newspaper, but that's not enough to synchronize a 24-hour clock," says Charles A. Czeisler, who directs the sleep medicine division at Harvard Medical School. (This situation could improve soon: this past weekend, rescuers successfully installed an electrical wire down one of the supply holes, and an American company called Lighting Science Group Corp. says it expects to have custom-designed LED lights on the way to Chile by week's end.)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/14/surviving-the-darkness.html?from=rss
One way to keep the miners on a daily routine is to simulate light and dark periods during each day. The men have already designated light and dark areas in the roughly half-mile-long tunnel where they are living, but the battery-powered lamps in the lighted areas may not be bright enough to trick the men's internal clocks into thinking it's daytime. "If you have really dim light, you can still read a newspaper, but that's not enough to synchronize a 24-hour clock," says Charles A. Czeisler, who directs the sleep medicine division at Harvard Medical School. (This situation could improve soon: this past weekend, rescuers successfully installed an electrical wire down one of the supply holes, and an American company called Lighting Science Group Corp. says it expects to have custom-designed LED lights on the way to Chile by week's end.)
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