Pixium Vision Implants Restore Sight in Rats with Retinal Degeneration, Humans Next (VIDEO)

Prima Vision, a company based in Paris, France, is reporting that its PRIMA wireless subretinal implants for people who lost their vision has show a great deal of promise in a pre-clinical trial. The technology is designed specifically for those whose natural photoreceptors no longer function, yet who retain retinal neurons that can be electrically activated. A bunch of the implants are injected into the back of the eye, each around 70-μm in width that represents a single pixel. The implants are basically tiny photovoltaic solar panels that emit electricity in response to light hitting their surface.
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ABOUT once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.

When I meet such a person it brightens my whole day. But I confess I often have a sadder thought: It occurs to me that I’ve achieved a decent level of career success, but I have not achieved that. I have not achieved that generosity of spirit, or that depth of character.

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Will Your Child Become Nearsighted? One Simple Way To Find Out

This is for everyone whose parents said, "Sitting too close to the TV is going to ruin your eyes." In other words, pretty much all of us.

Sitting too close to the TV doesn't predict nearsightedness, according to a study that tracked the vision of thousands of children over 20 years. Nor does doing a lot of close work.

Instead, as early as age 6 a child's refractive error — the measurements used for an eyeglass prescription — best predicts the risk.
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How $5000 surgery can permanently change brown eyes to blue

In the classic 1930s movie, "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy asks the good citizens of Oz whether they could dye her eyes to match her gown, and they happily oblige. Of course, eyes are not like hair, and 75 years on you still cannot dye your eyes to suit your outfit. But it turns out that you can actually change their color with the aid of a laser.

The technique was pioneered by California-based Stroma Medical and it is currently available in several countries, but it has yet to receive approval in the United States. So far,37 patients in Mexico and Costa Rica have undergone the procedure, which permanently turned their eyes from brown to blue.

Read more: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/lasers-can-turn-your-eyes-blue-brown-5000#ixzz3UCtpDO00

BRAIN’S LIGHT DETECTOR IS NOT SO SIMPLE AFTER ALL

Neuroscientists generally think of the front end of the human visual system as a simple light detection system.

The patterns produced when light falls on the retina are relayed to the visual cortex at the rear of the brain, where all of the “magic” happens. That’s when the patterns are transformed into our 3D view of the world.

Now, however, a brain imaging study challenges this basic assumption.

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This Is Your Brain on Love

Why love is not an emotion and how obsessive thinking begets romantic joy.
(Another great post from Maria Popova at Brainpickings)

Today, we turn to biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who studies the evolution of human emotions and the intricacies of the brain in — and on — love. Fisher explores the science of love without losing a sense of romance, shedding light on some of the complex ways in which the brain and the heart diverge.

If you can stomach the geekines, there’s actually a wealth of insight in this talkDr. Fisher gave at the American Psychiatric Association’s Sex, Sexuality and Serotonin conference in 2004, brilliantly synthesized here, in which she argues — with solid scientific evidence and from a rich interdisciplinary perspective — that antidepressants may jeopardize romantic love.

Easy on the eyes: How eyelash length keeps your eyes healthy

It started with a trip to the basement of the American Museum of Natural History in New York to inspect preserved animal hides. Later, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers built a wind tunnel about 2 feet tall, complete with a makeshift eye. By putting both steps together, the team discovered that 22 species of mammals -- from humans, to hedgehogs, to giraffes ¬- are the same: their eyelash length is one-third the width of their eye. Anything shorter or longer, including the fake eyelashes that are popular in Hollywood and make-up aisles, increases airflow around the eye and leads to more dust hitting the surface. "Eyelashes form a barrier to control airflow and the rate of evaporation on the surface of the cornea," 
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ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle

The rule raises health-care costs even as it means doctors see fewer patients while providing worse care.

The debate over ObamaCare has obscured another important example of government meddling in medicine. Starting this year, physicians like myself who treat Medicare patients must adopt electronic health records, known as EHRs, which are digital versions of a patient’s paper charts. If doctors do not comply, our reimbursement rates will be cut by 1%, rising to a maximum of 5% by the end of the decade.

I am an unwilling participant in this program. In my experience, EHRs harm patients more than they help.

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Apparently our poor bedside manner is a national crisis, judging by how my fellow physicians feel about the EHR program. A 2014 survey by the industry group Medical Economics discovered that 67% of doctors are “dissatisfied with [EHR] functionality.” Three of four physicians said electronic health records “do not save them time,” according to Deloitte. Doctors reported spending—or more accurately, wasting—an average of 48 minutes each day dealing with this system.

That plays into the issue of higher costs. The Deloitte survey also found that three of four physicians think electronic health records “increase costs.” There are three reasons. 

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Not surprisingly, a recent study in Perspectives in Health Information Management found that electronic health records encourage errors that can “endanger patient safety or decrease the quality of care.” America saw a real-life example during the recent Ebola crisis, when “patient zero” in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan, received a delayed diagnosis due in part to problems with EHRs.

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New Glasses Transform The Way Colorblind People See The World

This special eyewear is giving many a new outlook. 

EnChroma, a company in Berkeley, California, has created colorblindness correcting glasses, which allow those who are colorblind to see hues they may have never experienced before. While the sunglasses, which are meant for outdoor use in daylight, were first released two years ago, the company's new version is made from polycarbonate -- a material that's kid-friendly and usable in sports.

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Could This Man Hold the Secret to Human Regeneration?

Michael Levin wants to help people regrow lost limbs. Now he could be on the verge of a breakthrough.

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ARE TWO-THIRDS OF CANCERS DUE TO ‘BAD LUCK’?

A new statistical model suggests that almost two-thirds of adult cancer cases could be explained primarily by the “bad luck” of random mutations in the patients’ genes, rather than environmental factors or inherited traits.
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Frustrated at the lack of interest by the medical establishment in reducing the costs of diagnostic testing, and seeing almost no chance of getting the necessary research grants, Kanav Kahol returned home to New Delhi in 2011. He was a member of Arizona State University’s department of biomedical informatics. Kahol had noted that despite the similarities between most medical devices in their computer displays and circuits, their packaging made them unduly complex and difficult for anyone but highly skilled practitioners to use. As well, they were incredibly expensive — costing tens of thousands of dollars each.

Kahol knew that the sensors in these devices were commonly available and inexpensive, usually costing only a few dollars. He believed that he could connect these to a common computer platform and use commercially available computer tablets to display diagnostic information, thereby dramatically reducing the cost of the medical equipment. He also wanted to repackage the sensor data to make them intelligible to technicians with just basic medical training — the frontline health workers who do the tasks of physicians in parts of the world where physicians are in short supply.

ahol and his Indian engineering team built a prototype of a device called the Swasthya Slate (which translates to “Health Tablet”) in less than three months, for a cost of $11,000. This used an off-the-shelf Android tablet and incorporated a four-lead ECG, medical thermometer, water-quality meter, and heart-rate monitor. They then enhanced this with a 12-lead ECG and sensors for blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, blood haemoglobin, and urine protein and glucose. In June 2012, they sent this device to 80 medical labs for testing, which reported that it was as accurate as the medical equipment they used — but more suitable for use in remote and rural areas, because it was built for the rugged conditions there.

By January 2013, Kahol’s team had incorporated 33 diagnostic tests, including for HIV, syphilis, pulse oximetry, and troponin (relating to heart attack) into the Swasthya Slate and reduced its cost to $800 per unit. They also built a variety of artificial-intelligence–based apps for frontline health workers and started testing these in different parts of India.

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Ebola Doctors Are Divided on IV Therapy in Africa

Medical experts seeking to stem the Ebola epidemic are sharply divided over whether most patients in West Africa should, or can, be given intravenous hydration, a therapy that is standard in developed countries. Some argue that more aggressive treatment with IV fluids is medically possible and a moral obligation. But others counsel caution, saying that pushing too hard would put overworked doctors and nurses in danger and that the treatment, if given carelessly, could even kill patients.
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Partners in Health, using the French initials for Doctors Without Borders, whose staff members have worked on the front lines of Ebola outbreaks for years. “What if the fatality rate isn’t the virulence of disease but the mediocrity of the medical delivery?”

Doctors Without Borders representatives strongly disagreed, saying that Dr. Farmer’s assumptions about Ebola were incorrect, that intensive rehydration would probably not save as many patients as he believes, and that the W.H.O.’s position has not been proved.

The group’s overwhelmed doctors do what they can, officials said, but it is hard to insert needles while wearing three pairs of gloves and foggy goggles. IVs must be monitored, drawing virus-laden blood for tests is dangerous, and patients yank needles out — sometimes in delirium, sometimes just to go to the toilet when no nurse is around.

What 2000 Calories Looks Like

Here, we show you what roughly 2,000 calories looks like at some large chains. (Depending on age and gender, most adults should eat between 1,600 and 2,400 calories a day.) Researchers have long understood that people are more likely to finish what’s on their plate than to stop eating because they’ve consumed a given amount of food. It’s “the completion compulsion,” a phrase coined in the 1950s by the psychologist Paul S. Siegel. Combine that compulsion with the rising number of restaurant meals Americans eat and the substance of those meals, and you start to understand why we’ve put on so much weight. But there is some good news: As you’ll see below, it’s not so hard to eat bountifully and stay under 2,000 calories. It’s just hard to do so at most restaurants.
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Got a Minute? Let’s Work Out

According to a lovely new study, a single minute of intense exercise, embedded within an otherwise easy 10-minute workout, can improve fitness and health.

Just one minute.

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Retinal-scan analysis can predict advance of macular degeneration, study finds

n the study, the Stanford team analyzed data from 2,146 scans of 330 eyes in 244 patients seen at Stanford Health Care over a five-year period. They found that certain key features in the images, such as the area and height of drusen, the amount of reflectivity at the macular surface and the degree of change in these features over time, could be weighted to generate a patient’s risk score. Patients were followed for as long as four years, and predictions of the model were compared with actual instances of progression to wet AMD. The model accurately predicted every occurrence of progression to the wet stage within a year. About 40 percent of the time when the model did predict progression to wet AMD within a year, the prediction was not borne out.

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Microsoft Develops Navigation System for Blind Folks (VIDEO)

The world was not made for blind people and getting around it when you can’t see can be very challenging. This is the 21st century, though, and there’s already technology available that can be put to use in helping blind folks navigate and do things otherwise impossible for them to do alone.Microsoft has taken up this cause and partnered with a number of organizations to develop a system that harnesses smartphones, wireless beacons, and bone-conducting headsets to reveal the surroundings to blind people in an intuitive way.
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THE AMAZING STORY OF THE BLIND ENGINEER (WHO IS ALSO A TRIATHLETE)

Patricia Walsh is one of those people who seems to excel at everything she does. After several years in a successful and coveted stint as an engineer at Microsoft, she left to join Austin, Texas-based mobile payment app Mozido--a job she loves--in 2013. A longtime marathon runner, Walsh completed her first triathalon in 2010 and began breaking records a year later. She launched a motivational speaking business and wrote a book.

She’s also blind.

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LIFE WILL GET VERY DIFFICULT SOMETIMES. YOU CHOOSE HOW TO RESPOND

After losing her vision, Walsh could have gotten angry and bitter, but instead turned to running to help her deal with those emotions. Later, her father was ill and her apartment was burned down by an arsonist. Meanwhile, she had to finish her book, train for her sport, and protect her spot on the national team. The only way to keep going was to focus on what really mattered to her--changing the perception of athletes with disabilities from “participatory hobbyists” to hardcore competitors who are to be taken seriously. She says she could never do that if she got mired in negativity.

BIG ACCOMPLISHMENTS ARE OFTEN A COLLECTION OF SMALL ONES

When Walsh first ventured out onto that Ontario running path, she never could have dreamed that she’d compete in the Paralympic Games one day. She says that accomplishing the big goals is a matter of faithfully doing the work toward achieving them every day. It’s getting on a bus at 5:30 a.m. to go work out and jump in a pool of cold water, even when she doesn’t want to. But the only way to get better is to keep working. Stay in touch with what motivates you.

“The only way to [keep going] is by reminding yourself frequently why this is important to you, and it can’t be something superficial, it has to be something that honest-to-God means something to you at a heart level,” she says.

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WHY MUSIC MAJORS MAKE SOME OF THE BEST ENTREPRENEURS

Learning how to play a musical instrument and becoming a musician is an exercise in developing good listening skills, experimenting, overcoming repeated failure, self-discipline, and successful collaboration. It is simply impossible to become a successful music professional unless one also masters certain theoretical concepts, develops good presentation and improvisational skills and, ultimately, attains that elusive quality of originality that only comes once fear of failure is overtaken by the desire to acquire a new insight, a fresh perspective, and a unique voice.
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Magic May Lurk Inside Us All

Or at least we think we do. Several streams of research in psychology, neuroscience and philosophy are converging on an uncomfortable truth: We’re more susceptible to magical thinking than we’d like to admit. Consider the quandary facing college students in a clever demonstration of magical thinking. An experimenter hands you several darts and instructs you to throw them at different pictures. Some depict likable objects (for example, a baby), others are neutral (for example, a face-shaped circle). Would your performance differ if you lobbed darts at a baby?

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