New research from scientists show 80% of the world population is subjected to some form of light pollution, especially among the developed nations, reported Scientist. Authors of the paper also found LEDs contributed significantly to nighttime light pollution, please see below the full press release.

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced the competitive selection of nine solid-state lighting (SSL) projects to receive funding, in response to the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0001364 (“Solid-State Lighting Advanced Technology R&D – 2016”). These 18- to 24-month projects will focus on the following existing DOE SSL R&D program areas:

Got LED light? Display cases and grocery stores increasingly do, and that’s bad news for milk drinkers.

Plessey announced today the appointment of Maarten Klein as Head Agronomist to provide specialist expertise for Plessey's horticultural lighting solutions. Maarten brings specialist expertise in the use of LED lighting for growing commercial crops, developed whilst he was the Research Director at Delphy in Wageningen, Holland.

Our research team has released their latest LED package market demand report for May 2016, micro-LEDs displayed by ITRI at Computex 2016. DOE has unveiled its 2016 SSL R&D plan, which highlights LED and OLED technology developments.

To outwit rivals, Samsung intends to launch two bendable OLED smartphone models by next year and by 2018 will unveil QLED TVs onto the market, according to numerous reports.

Mumbai Metro One announced it will be going green by installing LED lights and energy harvesting solar panels, reported Business Standardrecently.

Some analysts predicted that most of the EU countries may soon phase out incandescent light bulbs for general lighting use.

Senior LG executives spoke about the company’s OLED TV market strategy at a press conference hosted at The Humble Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan earlier Tuesday.

LG showcased its latest 4K OLED TVs to be launched in Taiwan earlier today, but these innovative TVs are not going to be their new major revenue source yet, said senior company executives during a press conference at The Humble Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan earlier Tuesday.

DOE has published the 2016 edition of the Solid-State Lighting R&D Plan. It was developed in conjunction with community experts through input received at roundtable meetings held in September and October 2015 and at the DOE SSL R&D Workshop held in February 2016 in Raleigh, NC. The discussions covered R&D needs for LED and OLED technologies, ranging from core technology research and product development through manufacturing R&D.

This article contributed by a Wellmax editor analyses implications from the recent shutdown of Philips LED factory in Shenzhen, China. For Guangdong province alone, over 20 companies were listed. Kingsun Optoelectronic, Honglitronic entered into capital market, and the total market capitalization was over RMB 20 billion. The aggregate investment for provincial LED industry bases in Huizhou, Dongguan, Jiangmen, Nanhai, Zencheng and etc. was over 50 billion Chinese yuan.

Hopkinton, a town in Connecticut, U.S. discussed last week at a workshop enacting zoning ordinances to regulate commercial LED signs and solar energy projects, reported The Westerly Sun.

As Apple plans to introduce OLED iPhone soon, Samsung’s OLED panels will be used at the primary stage. In order to meet the OLED demand, Samsung is to shut down its L7 production line and replace it with OLED production ones by the end of December, 2016. The halt is expected to lead to short supply of 39.5- inch to 45-inch panels. Meanwhile, two leading Taiwanese panel manufacturers will directly benefit from the demand.

Interactive LED streetlights installed on Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey, U.S. are keeping local pedestrians fully connected and powered, reported Press of Atlantic City.

GlobalMed Technologies (GMT) announced that it has acquired Omnilux Medical, the gold standard for medical and aesthetic Light Emitting Diode (LED) skincare. The asset acquisition includes three Omnilux Medical Systems: the Omnilux Revive2™, Omnilux Blue™ and Omnilux Plus™, along with numerous patents and trademarks.

Elemental LED, a leading U.S. based engineering and technology company that manufactures LED lighting solutions announced today a partnership with Legacy Lighting that extends its Diode LED product brand into Austin, TX and the surrounding area. Elemental LED and its wholesale and manufacturing division, Diode LED, provides a wide variety of superior quality linear, task, and accent LED lighting solutions for both residential and commercial applications.

The Pakistan government has announced it will be including LED lights in its fiscal year 2016-2017 budget, the emerging market is expected to present high growth rates of CAGR 45% till 2020, but the source of the projections remains unclear.

This article that covers the global companies and governments pledge to deploy 6 billion LED bulbs is written by Arianna Tozzi from The Climate Group.

Philips Lighting, a global leader in lighting, welcomed a group of 28 European Union (EU) Agriculture Ministers including EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Phil Hogan to the Philips Lighting GrowWise Center in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The Center leads horticultural and vertical farming research where growth recipes are developed for food crops. The visit was part of the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Agriculture organized by the Dutch EU Presidency. The central theme of this two day visit to the Netherlands was 'Food of the future - the future of food'.

More than 190,000 KED bulbs were distributed in Chhattisgarh following central government’s “Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All' ( UJALA )” project in the past two and half months.

Chico, the most populated city in California, partners up with PG&E in switching all the streetlights to LED lamps, reported KRCR News.

Notice to readers that Hot Picks of the Week will be released one day later this week.

Taiwanese LED chip manufacturer Arima Optoelectronics Corporation (AOC) has released a statement on Thursday stating it is assessing whether Chinese competitor San’an Opto’s AlGaInP LED products had infringed its wafer bonding technology patents.

Leyard announced on June 2 that the company’s whole subsidy has participated in the investment of PV ML LLC, the investment entity that signed the stake transfer agreement with Legend Pictures for the acquisition of Magic Leap’s stake.

Leaders from Philips Lighting will meet today with Energy Ministers attending the seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7) summit in San Francisco, where the company will announce a commitment to sell more than 2 billion1 energy efficient LED light bulbs by 2020. Reaching this goal is estimated to save an amount of energy equivalent to that generated by 60 medium-sized coal-fired power stations with emissions equivalent to those from 24 million cars by 2020. The company will also reaffirm its pledge to make its global operations carbon neutral by 2020 and say that it expects electricity for its US operations to be 100% from renewable sources later this year.

A UBS analyst projected Applied Materials is capable of sourcing 100 million Apple iPhone screen, as the Cupertino based company pushes for OLED devices.

Xiaomi’s unveiled its latest wearable device Xiaomi Mi Band 2 that will be released in China on June 7, 2016, reported Engadget.

The West Berkshire Council in UK is close to completing a GBP 7.24 million (US $10.43 million) LED streetlight upgrade project in the next few weeks.

Networked LED light fixtures with built-in sensors can create a digital nervous system for cities. If deployed on streets, in parking garages and in buildings, this ubiquitous infrastructure  will create a constant stream of useful data for government, business and citizens.