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Circadian

BIOS Lighting System Can Pinch Hit for the Sun

Pinnacle_fixtures_with_BIOS_lighting
Pinnacle lighting fixtures at the Kaleida Health Gates Vascular Institute in Buffalo, New York, are illuminated by BIOS lighting. Health care facilities are among the business sectors in which BIOS believes its lighting technology will find traction. Photo courtesy of Pinnacle Architectural Lighting

San Diego — For generations, people lived according to the sun. It rose, and so did we; it sank, and we slept.

Today artificial lighting in the office and at home wreak havoc with our circadian rhythms.

A startup called Biological Innovations and Optimization Systems LLC (BIOS) is using LED technology developed at NASA to make lighting for people, plants and animals that mimics sunlight. The company says the lighting can help align our innate biological time and our social time, or the schedules imposed by school, work and other activities.

Robert Soler, the company’s vice president of research, developed the technology while working at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“From a circadian standpoint, the (International) Space Station is a unique environment in that it sees the sun every 90 minutes,” he said. “Our biology isn’t made to see a sunrise every 90 minutes.”