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A laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate the performance characteristics of the currently available highpower LEDs under various drive conditions and ambient temperatures. Light output degradation and color shift properties as a function of time were measured for five types of commercial high-flux LEDs, namely, red, green, blue, and white from one manufacturer, and a different high-flux white LED package from a second manufacturer. The major difference between the two manufacturers' products is that the first uses a single LED die per package, and the second uses multiple dies within its package. LED arrays were tested under normal drive current and ambient temperature, normal drive current and higher ambient temperature, and higher drive current and normal ambient temperature. Because each LED type has to operate at a particular ambient temperature, all were tested in specially designed individual life-test chambers. These test chambers had two functions: one, to keep the ambient temperature constant, and two, to act as light-integrating boxes for measuring light output parameters. Overall, the single-die green and white LED arrays showed very little light loss after 2,000 hours, even though the current and the ambient temperature were increased. However, the red LED array seemed to have a high degradation rate. The white LEDs had a significant color variation (of the order of a 12-step MacAdam ellipse) between them. However, the color shift over time was very small during the initial 2,000-hour period. For white LEDs to be accepted broadly for general illumination applications, the color variation between similar products must become much smaller, of the order of a 2-step MacAdam ellipse.

A neural circuit is a structural-functional unit of achieving particular information transmission and processing, and have various inputs, outputs and molecular phenotypes. Systematic acquisition and comparative analysis of the molecular features of neural circuits are crucial to elucidating the operating mechanisms of brain function. However, no efficient, systematic approach is available for describing the molecular phenotypes of specific neural circuits at the whole brain scale. In this study, we developed a rapid whole-brain optical tomography method and devised an efficient approach to map brain-wide structural and molecular information in the same brain: rapidly imaging and sectioning the whole brain as well as automatically collecting all slices; conveniently selecting slices of interest through quick data browsing and then performing post hoc immunostaining of selected slices. Using this platform, we mapped the brain-wide distribution of inputs to motor, sensory and visual cortices and determined their molecular phenotypes in several subcortical regions. Our platform significantly enhances the efficiency of molecular phenotyping of neural circuits and provides access to automation and industrialization of cell type analyses for specific circuits.