Ballon Generali diameter of . It has been used as advertising billboard for Fortis, then from 2002 for Eutelsat. In 2008, a partnership has been signed with Banque populaire and Airparif : renamed "ballon Air de Paris", its internal illumination system changes the outer colour in real-time, according to the ambient air pollution in Paris, measured by Airparif : from green (good) to red (bad) through orange (poor). This system was completed by an independent lighting (panels light-emitting diode, visible especially at night on the lower part of the shell) stating the air quality near traffic with the same colour code. On
Laser diode electron's original state and hole's state. (In a conventional semiconductor junction diode, the energy released from the recombination of electrons and holes is carried away as phonons, i.e., lattice vibrations, rather than as photons.) Spontaneous emission below the lasing threshold produces similar properties to an LED. Spontaneous emission is necessary to initiate laser oscillation, but it is one among several sources of inefficiency once the laser is oscillating. The difference between the photon-emitting semiconductor laser and a conventional phonon-emitting (non-light-emitting) semiconductor junction diode lies in the type of semiconductor used, one whose physical and atomic structure confers the possibility for