BlackBerry top priority this year is making its devices business profitable, its chief executive said on Wednesday, even as it weighs the future of its hardware operation.‘The device business must be profitable, because we don’t want to run a business that drags onto the bottom line,’ Chief Executive John Chen told investors at the company’s annual meeting. ‘We’ve got to get there this year.’Chen has previously said a decision would be made by September on the future of the unit, which has suffered a sustained drop in sales in recent quarters.But at the meeting, attended by around 100 people, he said he sees better opportunity in providing services that enable increasingly commoditized hardware to do more.

‘I don’t personally believe handsets will be the future of any company,’ he said.BlackBerry, once the smartphone market leader before being displaced by Apple Inc and competitors run on Alphabet Inc’s Android platform, has worked to reposition itself as a software and service provider focused on device management for large organizations.In its presentation to investors, the company said it expects the broader market for types of software it is producing to expand to $17.6 billion by 2019, from $525 million in 2012 and below $4 billion in 2015, powered by growth in medical, legal, financial and automotive industries.

But some of those in attendance were skeptical about BlackBerry’s ability to deliver on its strategic pivot.‘The first word that comes to mind is lackluster,’ said one shareholder at the meeting who declined to give his name. ‘Time is running out.’Chen reiterated that BlackBerry wants to grow its software revenue by 30 percent in this fiscal year, which he estimated would be double overall market growth, and to notch positive free cash flow.

BlackBerry is due to report first quarter results on Thursday.

Chen took up the CEO role in 2013 with a reputation as a turnaround artist. But the company’s stock has only risen modestly since then, with many investors waiting for signs the now-smaller company will be able to carve out new opportunities.‘I appreciate the strategy,’ said Ken Tota, an investor in BlackBerry’s biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. He said he was optimistic a renewed focus on security could help reinvigorate BlackBerry over the next five years.‘It’s a niche, but it’s a worldwide niche,’ he said.

Excessive blue light emitted by light emitting diodes (LED) can adversely impact human health, according to a report recently released by the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Science and Public Health. The report looked at LED street lighting on U.S. roadways.While LED lighting has several advantages, the excessive blue light it emits can be harmful. The human eye perceives the large amount of blue light emitted by some LEDs as white. Blue light directly affects sleep by suppressing the production of the hormone melatonin, which mediates the sleep-wake cycle in humans.

Compared with conventional street lighting, the blue-rich white LED street lighting is five times more disruptive to sleep cycle, the report said. Although more research is needed, evidence available suggests a long-term increase in the risk for cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and obesity caused by chronic sleep disruption due to exposure to blue light.The excessive blue wavelength contributes to glare effects as a result of larger scattering in the human eye.Contrary to the popular notion that bright LED lighting increases road safety, the report says discomfort and disability glare caused by unshielded, bright LED lighting negatively impacts visual acuity, thus “decreasing safety and creating road hazards”.

Glare forms a veil of luminance that reduces the contrast, thus in turn reducing the visibility of a target. The report also notes that unshielded LED lighting causes papillary constriction, leading to “worse night-time vision between lighting fixtures.” Intense blue spectrum can even damage the retina.The correlated colour temperature (CCT) of first-generation LEDs, which are currently used, is 4,000K. Higher CCT values indicate greater blue light emission, and in the case of 4,000K LED lighting, 29 per cent of the spectrum is emitted as blue light.

However, at 3,000K, the blue light emitted is only 21 per cent and appears “slightly warmer in tone”. While discomfort and disability glare is reduced, there is only a 3 per cent drop in energy efficiency compared with 4,000K LED lighting.More attention should be paid to proper design, shielding and installation so that no light shines above 80 degrees from the horizontal, the report says.Unless blue-light emission from 4,000K LED street lighting is restricted, retrofits using these lamps could result in 2.5 times increase in lighting pollution, said a study (World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness) published in the journal Science Advances,“Strong consideration should be made for effective shielding and limiting CCT of outdoor lighting to 3,000 Kelvin or lower,” the AMA recommends.