Last Christmas Eve, the mile of Rose Crossing between U.S. Highway 2 and Whitefish Stage was darker than it had been in years without luminaries lighting the road.
This year, Evergreen firefighters are bringing the light back to Rose Crossing, and they hope to start a new tradition of giving within the community.
Luminaries are candles that have been placed into paper bags that are weighed down with sand. In the past, residents on Rose Crossing, led by Kim Lister, have lined the road with these points of light as a way to celebrate the holidays with their neighbors.
The Christmas Eve tradition on Rose Crossing has been going on for at least 17 years, according to Evergreen Fire Rescue Chief Craig Williams, and his department would like to see it continue.
Williams said he contacted Lister after she decided not to light the luminaries last year to see if the fire department could help take on the tradition. The firefighters also wanted to add a new dimension to the project.
"I thought we could turn this into a fundraiser trying to benefit local groups and organizations in need," Williams said.
This year, people can purchase a $5 luminary and dedicate it to a loved one, Williams said. The regular luminaries will be in brown paper bags, and the purchased bag will be white. People who donate can pick up their bag at the fire department and decorate it before the event, Williams said.
The proceeds will go to the Boys and Girls Club of Evergreen.
Evergreen firefighters put up the initial cost of the candles, bags and sand, Williams said, which were quickly recouped by donations from the Lions Club of Evergreen and the Rotary Club.
Now, the fire department is hoping for donations that will go directly to the Boys and Girls Club.
The luminary lighting will begin at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve and run through 6 p.m., Williams said. Firefighters will be on hand to monitor the multiple tiny flames and Flathead County sheriff's deputies will help ensure the safety of participants and ward off vandals.
It will also be a training opportunity for the fire department, he said, because they will run the scene like an incident. But the basis of the event is about the community, he said.
"It's really cool; people generally drive with their lights off," Williams said.
Lister said last week that she and her family would provide mentorship support for the firefighters and that she was happy to see the luminary tradition come back. She and her family kept the event going for "many, many years" because it was beloved within the community.
"It was one of those things that gave a lot of people a gift, something to do as a family on Christmas Eve that was available to anyone regardless of where they came from," Lister said.
The Listers decided to switch gears last year and not pursue the luminaries because it takes up a big portion of the day that they would like to spend elsewhere, she said. After they made that decision, Lister said the fire department contacted her and tried to get the event going, but there wasn't enough time to pull it off.
2011年12月20日 星期二
2011年10月27日 星期四
Four-color Laser Source Produces High-quality White Light
The human eye is as comfortable with white light generated by diode lasers as with that produced by increasingly popular light-emitting diodes (LEDs), according to tests conceived at Sandia National Laboratories.
Both technologies pass electrical current through material to generate light, but the simpler LED emits lights only through spontaneous emission. Diode lasers bounce light back and forth internally before releasing it.
The finding is important because LEDs — widely accepted as more efficient and hardier replacements for century-old tungsten incandescent bulb technology — lose efficiency at electrical currents above 0.5 amps. However, the efficiency of a sister technology — the diode laser — improves at higher currents, providing even more light than LEDs at higher amperages.
“What we showed is that diode lasers are a worthy path to pursue for lighting,” said Sandia researcher Jeff Tsao, who proposed the comparative experiment. “Before these tests, our research in this direction was stopped before it could get started. The typical response was, ‘Are you kidding? The color rendering quality of white light produced by diode lasers would be terrible.’ So finally it seemed like, in order to go further, one really had to answer this very basic question first.”
Little research had been done on diode lasers for lighting because of a widespread assumption that human eyes would find laser-based white light unpleasant. It would comprise four extremely narrow-band wavelengths — blue, red, green, and yellow — and would be very different from sunlight, for example, which blends a wide spectrum of wavelengths with no gaps in between. Diode laser light is also ten times narrower than that emitted by LEDs.
The tests — a kind of high-tech market research — took place at the University of New Mexico’s Center for High Technology Materials. Forty volunteers were seated, one by one, before two near-identical scenes of fruit in bowls, housed in adjacent chambers. Each bowl was randomly illuminated by warm, cool, or neutral white LEDs, by a tungsten-filament incandescent light bulb, or by a combination of four lasers (blue, red, green, yellow) tuned so their combination produced a white light.
Both technologies pass electrical current through material to generate light, but the simpler LED emits lights only through spontaneous emission. Diode lasers bounce light back and forth internally before releasing it.
The finding is important because LEDs — widely accepted as more efficient and hardier replacements for century-old tungsten incandescent bulb technology — lose efficiency at electrical currents above 0.5 amps. However, the efficiency of a sister technology — the diode laser — improves at higher currents, providing even more light than LEDs at higher amperages.
“What we showed is that diode lasers are a worthy path to pursue for lighting,” said Sandia researcher Jeff Tsao, who proposed the comparative experiment. “Before these tests, our research in this direction was stopped before it could get started. The typical response was, ‘Are you kidding? The color rendering quality of white light produced by diode lasers would be terrible.’ So finally it seemed like, in order to go further, one really had to answer this very basic question first.”
Little research had been done on diode lasers for lighting because of a widespread assumption that human eyes would find laser-based white light unpleasant. It would comprise four extremely narrow-band wavelengths — blue, red, green, and yellow — and would be very different from sunlight, for example, which blends a wide spectrum of wavelengths with no gaps in between. Diode laser light is also ten times narrower than that emitted by LEDs.
The tests — a kind of high-tech market research — took place at the University of New Mexico’s Center for High Technology Materials. Forty volunteers were seated, one by one, before two near-identical scenes of fruit in bowls, housed in adjacent chambers. Each bowl was randomly illuminated by warm, cool, or neutral white LEDs, by a tungsten-filament incandescent light bulb, or by a combination of four lasers (blue, red, green, yellow) tuned so their combination produced a white light.
2011年9月23日 星期五
"When you take a chance for the good of your Paratroopers it pays back two-fold."
Graffiti in a combat zone is common. Mostly it covers the stalls in latrines, barrier walls, back of a bus seat, or anywhere where a soldier is idle for more than a few moments. As I rode a bus through the dusty streets of Al Asad Air Base, I scanned the back of the seat in front of me with various artistic representations of the standard stick man, poor attempts at poetry and other various forms of "art." Then one note caught my eye; it said "CSM Love…" Various phrases had been written and scratched out, but the last one, in bold, stayed.
You could tell it had been there a while; it wasn't recent. You could even tell it had been rewritten a few times as the ink faded. It said: "Is the man." Command Sgt. Maj. Jack Love is the man I was sent to interview to learn about the history of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, now the 2nd Advise and Assist Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, and the units long relationship with U.S. operations in Iraq.
When I sat down to write this story, I wasn't quite sure how this interview could have something new and groundbreaking or be able to shed light into the history. The topic I was directed to write on was the sacrifice of the 2/82 paratroopers in conjunction with the unit's direct link to the war in Iraq. But, let's be honest, the mentality of the 82nd Airborne Division is that we are the best at everything, we are paratroopers. We are willing to jump out of airplanes for kicks. It's not sacrifice, it's a profession, and we do it. Everything is "too easy."
But what I found in the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment's Senior Enlisted Adviser, was an influential, dedicated, and caring leader hidden behind a deep Alabama accent and gruff exterior. What I found was a true professional, who embodies the spirit of the "Falcon Brigade."
Before flying from Camp Ramadi to Al-Asad, to spend a week with Love, I asked fellow paratroopers, who had been with the 2/82 for an extended period of time, about Love and if they had any stories about him. Some stories were the standard fare about "old" sergeants major and some were outrageous or hardly believable. One such tall-tale was that he had glued his teeth back in during an earlier deployment to Iraq.
"One Christmas, when I was a kid, all I wanted was this white 12-speed bicycle with black handle-grips," Love said.
On that holiday, he got the bike he wanted, but the rule at his house was that guest got to use the best stuff and you played with what was left over, Love went on to describe.
You could tell it had been there a while; it wasn't recent. You could even tell it had been rewritten a few times as the ink faded. It said: "Is the man." Command Sgt. Maj. Jack Love is the man I was sent to interview to learn about the history of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, now the 2nd Advise and Assist Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, and the units long relationship with U.S. operations in Iraq.
When I sat down to write this story, I wasn't quite sure how this interview could have something new and groundbreaking or be able to shed light into the history. The topic I was directed to write on was the sacrifice of the 2/82 paratroopers in conjunction with the unit's direct link to the war in Iraq. But, let's be honest, the mentality of the 82nd Airborne Division is that we are the best at everything, we are paratroopers. We are willing to jump out of airplanes for kicks. It's not sacrifice, it's a profession, and we do it. Everything is "too easy."
But what I found in the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment's Senior Enlisted Adviser, was an influential, dedicated, and caring leader hidden behind a deep Alabama accent and gruff exterior. What I found was a true professional, who embodies the spirit of the "Falcon Brigade."
Before flying from Camp Ramadi to Al-Asad, to spend a week with Love, I asked fellow paratroopers, who had been with the 2/82 for an extended period of time, about Love and if they had any stories about him. Some stories were the standard fare about "old" sergeants major and some were outrageous or hardly believable. One such tall-tale was that he had glued his teeth back in during an earlier deployment to Iraq.
"One Christmas, when I was a kid, all I wanted was this white 12-speed bicycle with black handle-grips," Love said.
On that holiday, he got the bike he wanted, but the rule at his house was that guest got to use the best stuff and you played with what was left over, Love went on to describe.
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