CNN.com - New era of 'smart' lighting - Aug 30, 2005

CNN.com - New era of 'smart' lighting - Aug 30, 2005: "'Light isn't just for vision any more,' says Figueiro, program director at Rensselaer's Lighting Research Center and head of a committee on light and human health for the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America.
The 24-hour internal body clock is best known for governing cycles of alertness and sleep, and for producing jet lag when people travel across time zones. Light cues, especially blue light, help keep the clock on its daily cycle. 'We're pretty much blue-sky detectors' whose clocks count on bright days and dark nights, said Figueiro.
But that's not necessarily what modern life delivers. During the winter in the northeast, for example, a person can commute roundtrip in the dark and sit all day in electric light that's fine for vision, but may be too dim to stimulate the body clock. That's called biological darkness.
'We don't have this sharp signal of a bright light during the day and a dark night,' Figuerio said.
How that affects people has been hard to document in the general population, she said, but studies suggest such possibilities as seasonal depression, fatigue, sleep disturbances and maybe even cancer, especially breast cancer. Some studies suggest reduced productivity on the job.
To counter that, architects and lighting engineers might someday take body clocks into account when they design lighting schemes, she said. They may be encouraged to take steps like providing plenty of natural light through windows and skylights, and installing bright blue LEDs near computer screens to give a dose of clock-adjusting light, she said.
David Sliney, a medical physicist who studies light-related issues at the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, said research into how room lighting affects health is "

Steve's Commentary
Lighting isn't just to help you see... Not only does this article discuss health related benefits of lighting, it also discusses using LED lights to transmit data just like a fiber optic cable does today.