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Each hour a person spends squinting into a smartphone or staring at a screen increases their risk of nearsightedness, a new evidence review suggests. Every daily one-hour increment in digital screen time is associated with 21% higher odds of myopia, researchers report. What's more, the risk continues to increase as more time each day is spent with screens, researchers found. "Myopia risk increased significantly from one to four hours of screen time and then rose more gradually thereafter," the research team wrote. The risk of nearsightedness is doubled for people who spend four or more hours with a screen every...

The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother? When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. A researcher shadowed him in case he stumbled. “You just had to see it to believe it,” said Beatrice de Gelder,...

An experimental eye implant could be the secret to restoring a patient’s central vision—the part of our eye that lets us see faces, details, and letters more clearly. Many patients now using the implant as part of a clinical trial have reported successful results. The implant was developed by Science Corporation, a competitor to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which Musk plans to use to merge humans and AI together. The company announced preliminary results for its latest clinical trial this week, reporting that some study participants can now see well enough to read from books, play cards, and more. All of...

A study from Tufts University found that daily consumption of pistachios can enhance eye health by increasing macular pigment optical density (MPOD), which helps protect against blue light and age-related eye damage. This benefit is attributed to pistachios’ unique content of lutein, a plant pigment essential for eye health and potentially useful in preventing age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Daily pistachios boost eye health by raising lutein, protecting against age-related damage, and supporting brain function. A recent study by researchers at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy suggests that eating pistachios daily may greatly benefit eye health. This...

In older adults, even mild impairment can affect the brain. But there are simple ways to reduce the harm.Adults over age 65 who experience vision loss have a nearly 50 per cent increased risk of developing dementia. If those vision problems are corrected, that risk drops dramatically. That’s according to a report published by an international commission focused on dementia prevention, which added vision impairment to its list of 14 total modifiable risk factors for dementia. Other risk factors include smoking, diabetes, social isolation and hypertension. Experts say the addition of vision loss is not a surprise, particularly given that...

Research led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, Ph.D. suggests that age-related macular degeneration (AMD) decreases an essential fatty acid, preventing the formation of a class of protective molecules and reducing repair potential. The discovery may also open new therapeutic avenues for AMD. The study shows that AMD decreases peripheral retinal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) 22:6 in rod photoreceptor cells, limiting the elongation of fatty acids to form very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (VLC-PUFAs). VLC-PUFAs are precursors of elovanoids, bioactive chemical messengers made from omega-3 very- long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. Elovanoids, discovered by the Bazan lab, have been shown to restore the structure and...

If you have been wearing glasses for years, like me, it can be surprising to discover that you perceive the world thanks to a few giant companies that you have never heard of. Worrying about the fraying edge of motorway lights at night, or words that slide on the page, and occasionally spending a fortune at the opticians is, for many of us, enough to think about. And spectacles are unusual things. It is hard to think of another object in our society which is both a medical device that you don’t want and a fashion accessory which you do....

Scientists are on the brink of restoring sight to the blind by sending moving images directly to the brain. In a world-first, surgeons have implanted a visual stimulator chip in the brain of a 30-year-old woman. The patient, who has been totally blind for seven years, saw coloured flashes, lines and spots when signals were sent to her brain from a computer. Her doctors are now planning to send footage from a tiny video camera to the brain, which could provide the world’s first bionic eye and restore sight to millions. The technology bypasses the eyes, meaning it has the...

Yesterday, at a neighbor's house, his 4th grade daughter read something very well and I asked her what grade she was in and complimented her on her reading .....

Just curious where other freepers get their contact lenses online? My tow kids are now both sporting contacts and I am looking for reputable sites that will deliver to my home for the best price. Can anyone lend their experience?

...endless shock waves of intellectual disorientation. Here is jargon concocted by our elite experts during this long national nightmare: psycholinguistics, miscue analysis, reading strategies, comprehension strategies, whole word, guessing, picture reading, whole language, sight words, balanced literacy, reading readiness, word walls, active learning practices, closed instructional activities, high-frequency words, thinking and learning about print, invented spelling, reading recovery, emergent literacy, creative curriculum approach, functional systemic linguistic theory, rich literacy activities, authoring cycle, capability beliefs, post-reading, lifelong reader, cognitive flexibility theory, independent reading, kid watching. The drift of all this malarkey is that reading is a very difficult thing to do.

More than 70,000 Minnesota homeowners were behind on their mortgages and received pre-foreclosure notices last year, a warning that the housing market still faces serious hurdles in 2011. About 71,665 struggling homeowners got the notices in 2010, up 8 percent from 2009, according to the Minnesota Home Ownership Center, which released the numbers Thursday. The number of notices rose 3 percent in the Twin Cities metro area, but 15 percent elsewhere in Minnesota. The numbers suggest that despite glimmers of hope in the job market, the state could see more people lose homes this year than they did last year,...

First Lt. Jason Hickman, of Greenville, W.Va., proudly holds Noor Hassam Oudah during a celebration in her honor, Dec. 9. The one-year-old, known as "Baby Nourah," was born blind with congenital cataracts. Hickman spearheaded a campaign, raising over $5,000 for her surgery through donations from Soldiers of the 150th Armored Reconnaissance Squadron, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, and their families and friends. Baby Nourah received surgery through the Khalidi Medical Center in Amman, Jordan, Nov. 15, three days after her first birthday. Photo by Spc. Ruth McClary, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team. BAGHDAD — One-year-old Noor Hassam Oudah, known as...

Medical Columnist Mark Roberts look at our five senses, how they work and their importance...."What's that smell?"

"They're going to put it where?"

MELBOURNE, April 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A man's vision has been restored by a corneal patch grown from adult stem cells by a team at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) and the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery (BOBIM). The patch, which replicates the cornea, was cultivated from a single stem cell from a donor eye and was transplanted to the surface of the man's eyes. The research team was led by Dr Mark Daniell (CERA) and Dr Erik Thompson (BOBIM). The process, known as a limbal stem cell transplant, is thought to be the first...

A team of Johns Hopkins neuroscientists has worked out how some newly discovered light sensors in the eye detect light and communicate with the brain. The report appears online this week in Nature. These light sensors are a small number of nerve cells in the retina that contain melanopsin molecules. Unlike conventional light-sensing cells in the retina—rods and cones—melanopsin-containing cells are not used for seeing images; instead, they monitor light levels to adjust the body's clock and control constriction of the pupils in the eye, among other functions.

WASHINGTON — Scientists are testing artificial retinas that they hope can restore partial sight to people who've lost their vision to the most common causes of blindness.

Mumbai: Seven years after its inception amid much fanfare, Reliance Life Sciences, or RLS, is finally rolling out stem cell-based therapies in India, beginning with a treatment that can restore or improve vision. “This is the first commercial stem cell treatment in ophthalmology in the country,” said K.V. Subramaniam, CEO and president, RLS, part of the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance group. The company, which has invested around Rs1,000 crore in the business, has lined up other stem cell therapies for cardiac infarction, diabetic ulcer, and stable vitiligo or leukoderma (a skin disease), among others, to be offered in clinics in the...

iZumi Bio has agreed to license some patents from the J. David Gladstone Institutes as they begin to work together on new adult stem cell technology involved in devising cardiovascular therapies. ReportStem cell transplants were used to restore the sight of six blind patients at a London hospital. StorySome 2,500 delegates attended the recent International Society for Stem Cell Research in Philadelphia. And insiders say that the development of induced pluripotent stem cells has clearly energized the entire field. ReleaseIn a new study regarding age-related diseases, researchers identified two key regulatory pathways that control how well adult stem cells...