MATRIX

Do you want to decorate your Christmas tree and fight global warming at the same time? Well now you can! Just make sure that you use Solar Lights for free lighting at Christmas.

Improvements in technology now mean that the costs of Christmas lights powered by solar energy have reduced to the point that everyone can now afford them. And the best part is that once you have bought and installed them the cost of lighting them is free.

Solar powered lights require no connections to an outlet so there is no electric bill for solar lighting. Of course you have to live in an area where you get sufficient sunlight each day to charge up the batteries with solar energy during the winter season especially around the Christmas holidays. Even if it is cloudy it can still be possible to charge a battery enough for good night time lighting, however it is always best to check that the type you are looking to purchase will do this if it is of concern to you.

As with all solar lights installation is easy. Your main problem is going to be finding a location with direct access to sun light for the mini solar panel that collects the suns energy to charge up the power unit. But now there is no need for long and dangerous extension cords trailing around the floor.

You can even get solar lights for Christmas trees which are totally for outdoor use and which will cope with whatever the weather chooses to throw at them. So now you can easily put lights on trees in your yard that were previously out of reach. Just hang them up and you are all set.

A typical scenario might be a string of say 60 lights on a tree along your driveway which are charged by the sun during the day and which turn on automatically at dusk and then run for about eight hours during the night with no energy cost at all. There are now many different solar lighting solutions designed specifically for use at Christmas and other holiday occasions. Due to the new technology, miniaturization and the use of LED lights you can now find many new and innovative designs that previously you could only dream about.

Solar powered Christmas lights for both indoor and outdoor use are now available in many different fixtures and fittings to suit any use or location you many want them for. You can of course also use them year round with no energy costs to enhance your yard, property or trees in any way you wish and most units will continue to illuminate from dusk till dawn.

There are many different designs available including string lights, snowman lights, Santa lights, Christmas tree lights, stake lights, garlands, reindeer, snow balls, stars, maple leaves, flowers and in fact almost everything you can imagine for displaying a Christmas theme. And these are all available in many different and beautiful colors. Whatever you want you will be able to get.

So now it is easy to create a really festive Christmas attraction or a party atmosphere and decorate a tree or building with one or more sets of solar powered lights designed specially for the holiday season. And you can do all this with no electric cost using free energy direct from the sun.

People think of the implantable cardiac pacemaker as being space-age technology, but that’s actually not true. Pacemakers were around long before the first manned space flight. In fact, just this year, they’re turning 50. For half a century, people with heart rhythm problems have benefited from pacemaker technology.

If you’re math impaired or need some cultural points of reference, pacemakers were first invented before I Love Lucy went into syndication and they were in fairly widespread use before Richard Nixon, Helmut Schmidt, or Chairman Mao came to power.

Of course, the earliest pacemakers were really nothing like the small, compact, mini-computers that are in use today. The first pacemakers were large devices that could only supply small amounts of electricity to help force the heart to beat in a regular rhythm.

While modern pacemakers can last six, eight, even ten years or more, one of the very first devices implanted in a Swedish heart patient named Arne Larsson lasted just one day before the batteries conked out and the device had to be replaced. Mr. Larsson not only persevered through repeated operations in the early 1950s when technology was very basic, he became a lifelong advocate of implantable cardiac devices.

In fact, you could say the pacemaker was made for him. Actually, there were efforts in various locations in the early 1950s to find a way to build a pacemaker. It was known that a little bit of electricity delivered to the heart would force it to beat. It was also known that many people suffered from hearts that did not beat rapidly enough or reliably enough on their own. In Sweden, Arne Larsson had serious heart problems and his wife sought out an inventor to help create the product that could save him; together they worked tirelessly to come up with what could most charitably be called an “experimental device”. Rvne Elmqvist was the inventor and the story goes that this first pacemaker was literally built in his kitchen.

Meanwhile, over in the United States, similar efforts were going on. A man by the name of Earl Bakken was also building a pacemaker based on plans he got out of Popular Mechanics for a metronome. The relationship between timing and pacing is important. Pacemakers not only have to give off electrical energy to help force the heart to beat, they have to do it in a precisely timed way. Pacemakers require precise timing circuitry to force the heart to beat in a healthful way.

The first major technological leap in pacemakers occurred when pacemakers stopped just pacing the heart to a preset rhythm and started to offer more “intelligent” therapy. Sensing is the function that allowed pacemakers to “listen” to the heart and literally record what the heart was doing on its own.

Pacemakers quickly adopted computer and microchip technology to add “brains,” so that the pacemaker was equipped to listen to the heart, “make a decision,” and then pace or not.Modern pacemakers monitor every beat of the heart and “fill in the missing beats” when the heart does not beat as it ought to. When nothing is needed, the pacemaker merely observes, content to be on stand-by.

Another major advancement in pacemakers occurred with the so-called transvenous lead. Transvenous means “through the vein,” and lead is the standard term for the insulated wire that runs from the pacemaker (usually implanted in the upper chest) to the heart itself.

The first pacemakers required an open-heart procedure to implant the pacemaker, but it was not to put in the pacemaker itself. That part of the operation can actually be done under local anesthetic. The reason an open-heart surgery was required back then was that the lead had to somehow be connected to the heart.

In the first generations of pacemakers, the lead was sewn to the outside of the heart. This made pacemaker surgery a major operation and left a big scar.

A transvenous lead was designed to be inserted through a tiny incision in a vein (so tiny it can be done under local anesthetic) and then gently maneuvered into the heart and anchored on the inside of the heart.

With transvenous leads, pacemaker surgery became much faster and simpler. In fact, for many patients (depending on individual factors), pacemaker implantation can be done on an outpatient basis.

Today, pacemakers are getting smaller, smarter, and lasting longer. Today’s pacemakers keep a beat-by-beat record of the heart’s activity (which it can send to the doctor’s office in the form of a printout with graphs and tables). They can be programmed to help work around certain cardiac conditions to provide even better therapy.

The latest advancement involves what is being called “remote patient monitoring” or telemedicine. Using special equipment, a pacemaker patient can send information from the pacemaker to the doctor’s officefrom just about anywhere.

While remote patient monitoring is becoming increasingly sophisticated, pacemakers were actually some of the original devices to offer telemedicine. Even as far back as the 1980s, pacemaker people could send information from home to the doctor’s office over a regular telephone. That technology is still around today, although with some refinements. In fact, pacemakers were some of the very first devices to introduce the whole concept of having a “check-up” with doctor and patient in two different locations!

The pacemaker business is still going strong. Millions of people all over the world have benefited and continue to benefit from this life-enhancing therapy.

While finding out you need a pacemaker can be a big surprise and quite unsettling, most long-term pacemaker patients adjust well to having the device. Some even report that they more or less forget about it between check-ups.

While the “typical” pacemaker patient is a senior citizen, pacemakers are not uncommon in children. In fact, even newborns sometimes need them.Pacemakers are literally implanted in newborns one day old and in centenarians.