Approximately 14 percent of the world's population suffer from dry eye disease (DED) but treatments are limited because it's difficult to model the complex human eye for drug development. Now though, University of Pennsylvania bioengineers developed an "eye-on-a-chip" complete with a motorized blinking eyelid. The hope is that the artificial eye will lead to a deeper understanding of dry eye disease, enable drug screening, and even become a testbed for contact lens technology and eye surgery. Their technology also received the 2018 Lush Prize awarded for innovations that could help eliminate animal testing for shampoos and other beauty product. From Eurekalert:
In this study, (Dan) Huh and (Jeongyun) Seo focused on engineering an eye model that could imitate a healthy eye and an eye with DED, allowing them to test an experimental drug without risk of human harm.
To construct their eye-on-a-chip, Huh's team starts with a porous scaffold engineered with 3D printing, about the size of a dime and the shape of a contact lens, on which they grow human eye cells. The cells of the cornea grow on the inner circle of scaffolding, dyed yellow, and the cells of the conjunctiva, the specialized tissue covering the white part of human eyes, grow on the surrounding red circle. A slab of gelatin acts as the eyelid, mechanically sliding over the eye at the same rate as human blinking. Fed by a tear duct, dyed blue, the eyelid spreads artificial tear secretions over the eye to form what is called a tear film.
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"Ocular dominance" is defined as "the priority of one eye over the other as regards preference of use or acuity of vision." Awareness of your dominant eye is important for photography, golf, baseball, and archery. The above video explains how to conduct the Miles test to determine your dominant eye.
(via Weird Universe) Read the rest
Researchers have spent decades exploring methods to 3D print organs for transplant but progress is slow due to the complex structure of, say, a kidney or pancreas. Precise Bio, a startup founded by scientists from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, claim that the first real success will come from 3D-printed corneas. They've already conducted animal studies and are building a roadmap toward human trials. From
IEEE Spectrum:
Corneas could be the first mainstream application of bioprinting, (Precise Bio CEO Aryeh) Batt says, in part because they have a layered structure that’s a good match for the technology. Each layer consists of different types of cells and fibers, which the printer could lay down in sequence, and these layers don’t contain blood vessels or nerves. What’s more, putting a new kind of transplant in the eye is inherently safer than implanting one deep in the body, since physicians could easily check for signs of trouble and could remove the tissue if anything seemed wrong.
There’s certainly a need for more corneas in the world, says Kevin Corcoran, president and CEO of the Eye Bank Association of America. In 2017, his members supplied nearly 51,000 transplantable corneas to patients in the United States, and also sent more than 26,000 abroad. Internationally, “there is a tremendous amount of unmet demand,” he says. “It’s estimated that 10 million people suffer from corneal blindness globally, primarily because they lack access to effective and affordable treatment.”
Part of Precise Bio’s proprietary approach is its printer, which uses a technique called laser-induced forward transfer to propel droplets of bioinks onto a surface.
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Neuroscience researcher Guillaume Riesen put together this video in 2011 but it's just as mind-blowing today. In it, he shares a trick that allows you to see the blood vessels in your own eyeball! It works, I tried it.
(reddit)
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A Snellen chart (below) may just look like random letters in different sizes, but they were carefully designed to measure visual acuity. This piece on testing the limits of human vision brings it all into focus. Read the rest
I CAN NOT put drops in my eye. It freaks me the heck out. I use this Auto Dropper when things get critical.
I will squirm, wrestle, wiggle and flee from any attempt to put drops in my eyes. The idea of contacts is kind of a laughable non-reality. Teams of luchadores Mexicanos could not hold me down! Nothing goes in my eyes!
I would spend a lot of time trying to get drops to contact the surface of my eye, especially in windy and smoky times like the California winter. Now, I employ the Auto Dropper. The contraption centers the bottle over my eye, holds open my lower eyelid open, and 1 time out of 3 gets the drop in place, because I still fucking hate eye drops.
When I get really twitchy, I'll just fill the corner of my eye with the solution and open the eye. It wastes a ton of liquid tho.
Ableware 786770001 Autodrop Eye Drop Guide via Amazon Read the rest
"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."
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The Onion poses a mystifying question of evolutionary biology: wouldn't it be better if animals had more eyes?
I rather think more mouths would be preferable. Read the rest
Photographer Suren Manvelyan continued his series of stunning closeups of eyes by focusing on non-humans. Above: Red-eared turtle. Below, a Fennec fox and a raven. Read the rest
Colored and embiggening contacts are done. The hot thing is contacts that include cartoon twinkles and other reflections. Brian Ashcraft reports on the latest thing from Japan.
The difference here is that these lenses attempt to make your eyes not only look expressive, but like they belong in a 2D anime.
I reckon these lenses are ideal for cosplayers—or people who want to resemble anime characters. Perhaps, both.
There are three types available, which I'll call blobs, sparkles and stars.
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This unscientific but fun timed eye test asks viewers to guess which square is a slightly different shade than the others. Prepare for a minute or so of eye-melting challenge! Read the rest
My daughter, her friend, and I had fun taking this non-scientific color brightness vision test. You have to identify the one square that has a different brightness level within a grid of similarly colored squares. It gets harder as you progress. It took me a few tries, but I finally received the "hawk" badge, with a score of 25.
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It's not good to let someone lick your eyeballs. Y'know, conjunctivitis, corneal abrasions, that kind of thing. That said, "worming" or "oculolinctus" is not only a sexual fetish as you might expect, but apparently a fun classroom activity among some pre-teens in Japan, according to japanCrush. There are also YouTube videos of the practice. The video above does not show the licking, but it is titled "Oculolinctus" and the description reads "Just begging for a lickin'."
"I don't ask just anyone to do it," Elektrika Energias, 29, told the Huffington Post. "Guys I like a lot are more likely to not think it's so weird. I've never had anyone turn me down though. I got some weird offshoot of TB in my eye once. I ended up with corneal ulcers and I spent like a month in the hospital." Read the rest
Prints are available for $16. Designer Yoni Alter also published a cheat sheet, if you can't figure them all out! Read the rest
Panasonic has an eye on your parental dollar in this ad for a baby monitor, posted today by Ads of the World. The creative director was Daniel Corrêa. Read the rest
Professor Eustace P. Toffeynuts III, Ph.D., D.D.T., L.S.D., has produced a very important treatise on the freaky nature of goat eyes, their relationship to the freaky nature of octopus eyes and why both animals are clearly in league with Satan.
Goat Eye Syndrome is characterized by eyes afflicted with horrific horizontal pupils similar to those of cephalopods such as octopi, squid, or cuttlefish. The pupils of these beasts are approximately the shape of a kidney bean, but instead of dividing the eye vertically, in the manner of noble, trustworthy beasts such as tigers, bobcats, and snakes, the GES pupils transfix the eye horizontally. This is disgusting. The only other type of animal to display such disgusting, vomit-inducing eyes are the previously mentioned cephalopods (which have a long association with death from the murky depths and Cthulhu) and Kermit the Frog, who is a felt puppet created by Jim Henson, and should not be considered an example of an accurate representation of frog physiology.
Ignore this research at your own peril.
Professor Eustace P. Toffeynuts III, Ph.D., D.D.T., L.S.D.: Goat Eyes: Satanic ploy, or merely horrific crime against nature? A serial treatise on the unnatural pupils of those beasts of the genus capra (2006)
(Thanks, Ed Yong!)
Image courtesy Flickr user BitBoy, via CC
Previously:
Ancient cold-blooded goat had tiny brain and eyes - Boing Boing
Six-horned goat - Boing Boing
Photos of strange-looking goats - Boing Boing Read the rest
I'm sick and tired of washing my contact lenses everyday, and my dog Malcolm recently broke my glasses with his teeth. That's why I'm thinking about getting Lasik. Read the rest
