This is the VOA Special English Development Report, from voaspecialenglish.com More than one and a half billion people around the world live without electricity. Finding better ways to bring light to the poor is the goal of researchers like David Irvine-Halliday. In the late nineteen nineties, the Canadian professor was working in Nepal when his return flight was cancelled. A delay gave him time to take a fourteen-day hiking trip in the Himalayas. As he tells it, one day he looked in the window of a school and noticed how dark it was. This is a common problem for millions of children around the world -- and not just at school, but also at home. Many families use kerosene oil lamps. There are many problems with these lamps. They produce only a small amount of light. They are dangerous to breathe. And they are a big fire danger, causing many injuries and deaths each year. Kerosene costs less than other forms of lighting, but it is still costly in poor countries. Professor Irvine-Halliday says many people spend well over one hundred dollars a year on the fuel. When he returned to Canada, he began researching ways to provide safe, clean and affordable lighting. He began experimenting with light-emitting diodes, leds, at his laboratory at the University of Calgary in Alberta. As a professor of renewable energy, he already knew about the technology. Light-emitting diodes are small glass lamps that use much less electricity than traditional bulbs and last much longer. Professor...
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