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April 22, 2015April 24, 2018

Celebrities at Film & Comic Con Festival Wear Sunwear from Marcolin

This month in the sunwear celebrity spotlight, during the Middle East Film & Comic Con Festival that took place in Dubai April, 9 to 11, many celebrities were caught wearing Marcolin.

Angelica Bridges wore Guess Eyewear (GU7385_45B style). The American actress, model and singer is the leader of the pop group “Strawberry Blonde” and achieved fame on TV series “Days of our Lives” and as “Taylor Walsh” on the internationally popular television series “Baywatch”.

Clive Standen sported Diesel Eyewear (DL0118_52V style). The English actor is best known for playing “Sir Gawain” in the series “Camelot”. Presently he’s starring as “Rollo” in the popular History Channel series “Vikings”.

Gillian Anderson wore Guess Eyewear (GU6838_56F style). The American actress achieved international recognition for her role as FBI Special Agent “Dana Scully” on the sci-fi horror drama series “The X-Files”. Others spotted in Marcolin frames were Hayley Atwell in Guess Eyewear (GU7398_01B style), Kelly Hu in Diesel Eyewear (DL0118_52V style) and Sam Jones in Diesel Eyewear (DL0142_01N style).

April 20, 2015April 24, 2018

See in the dark with eye drops?

Even though it’s being reported in Newsweek and other mainstream media that independent research group Science for the Masses has developed eye drops which they claim allows the user to see better in darkness, other researchers warn the drops could potentially cause permanent damage to the eye.

The drops contain chlorin e6, a chemical used in cancer therapies and which has been shown to improve night vision in mice, but has been shown in experiments in rabbits to cause damage to retinal cells.

The test subject, the group’s biochemical researcher, was administered the drops and then asked to identify symbols located ten metres away on varying backgrounds, and was able to identify individuals in the dark at up to 50 metres three times better than the control. No short term side effects were noted and the subject’s vision appeared to return to normal the next day.

“I think there is no evidence that use of chlorin e6 eye drops is safe at the doses described and I would strongly urge people not to administer this medication to the eyes,” says Dr. Jacque Duncan, an ophthalmologist at UCSF Medical Center.

Further information: http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/03/30/no-biohackers-did-not-just-discover-eyedrops-that-give-you-night-vision-and-using-them-might-damage-your-eyesight/

April 15, 2015April 24, 2018

An Eye Test that Sees Myopia Coming

A simple eye test in first grade could predict the onset of myopia years in advance.

When American researchers conducted a study with 4,500 children aged 6 to 11, they found that 414 of them became myopic (nearsighted) between the ages of 7 and 13. Among the 13 risk factors in the study, the Ohio researchers found that the strongest single predictor of myopia was refractive error.

Children who grow up with normal vision are slightly farsighted at around 6 or 7 years old. However, those who become myopic by their early teens show no refractive error when they are around 6 or 7.

Taking such a test at this age could predict the onset on myopia a few years later, allowing parents to plan for eye testing schedules and glasses. It would also open up research avenues into therapies that could prevent the need for glasses altogether.

To learn more: http://archopht.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2206339

April 13, 2015April 24, 2018

Improving Vision through Training

According to psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, just one week of training by repeatedly performing a perceptual-learning task can improve the vision of the elderly to be comparable to young adults.

“Our research indicates that the visual system of the elderly retains a high degree of plasticity and demonstrates that training methods can be used to improve visual function,” says John G. Andersen, who co-authored the study.

Subjects were shown a striped visual stimulus and asked to determine if the image had been rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise. Researchers compared the results of 16 young adults (average age of 22) and 16 older adults (average age of 71) in 750 trials a day over a seven day period. After seven days the older adults showed enough improvement in near-vision acuity to eliminate the difference between the two groups.

It is not yet known if the effects of visual training lead to improvement in real-world tasks, such as driving.

Further information: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/boosting-older-adults-vision-through-training.html

April 9, 2015April 24, 2018

Regrowing corneal cells from teeth

Pittsburgh University researchers have succeeded in transforming stem cells from wisdom teeth into corneal cells in mice. These cells could be used to repair corneal scarring and offer a potential future treatment for corneal blindness, a condition affecting millions worldwide.

Corneal blindness is typically treated with transplants but rejection of donor tissue and a shortage of donor corneas present potential issues. “Our work is promising, because they use the patient’s own cells for the treatment, which reduces the risk of encountering these problems,” says Fatima Syed-Picard, who led the study.

Dental pulp stem cells may also be used to regrow other tissues such as nerves and bone in future regenerative therapies.

Further information: http://www.upmc.com/media/NewsReleases/2015/Pages/wisdom-teeth-stem-cells-corneal.aspx