Chinese nanotechnologists injected tiny particles into the eyes of mice resulting in the rodents demonstrating "infrared 'night vision'" that lasted for months. According to nanoscientist Tian Xue and colleagues the University of Science and Technology of China, the technology could eventually help those with certain kinds of color blindness and "provide the potential for close integration within the human body to extend the visual spectrum." From New Scientist:

Like humans, mice cannot perceive light with a wavelength longer than 700 nanometres, which is at the red end of the visible spectrum. But the nanoparticles absorb light with longer – infrared – wavelengths and convert it into shorter wave light that retinal cells can detect. This converted light peaks at a wavelength of 535 nanometres, so the mice see infrared light as green...

Some mice did develop cloudy corneas after the injection, but this disappeared within a fortnight and occurred at similar rates to those in the control group. The team found no other evidence of damage to the mice’s eyes two months after the experiment.

The researchers published their findings in the scientific journal Cell: "Mammalian Near-Infrared Image Vision through Injectable and Self-Powered Retinal Nanoantennae" Read the rest

And if shaking your head really fast is, er, problematic, you can also just look at an angle or move away from the screen until the image appears.

Here's an Instructable on how to make your own head-shaking illusions.

(via r/interestingasfuck)

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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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What animals have night vision and how the hell can they see in the dark anyway? (Nat Geo WILD via The Kid Should See This)

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If you've ever tried to buy online eyeglasses, you'll understand why this $1.99 ruler from Eyeque is a godsend. They also sell a $29.99 kit to check your vision using your smartphone.

The simple to use EyeQue PD ruler provides you the ability to measure pupillary distance. Pupillary distance (PD) is the distance measured in millimeters between the centers of the pupils of the eyes. The PD is required to order eyeglasses.

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Based on a recent eye-tracking study, researchers believe there's a genetic component to variations in how humans process visual information. Read the rest

Invisible London is a great primer on infrared filmmaking, with lovely shots of London as the backdrop. Read the rest

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

Look at the above image. The higher the peaks, the more sensitive your eyes are to contrasts at those frequencies. Ian Goodfellow spotted the image in a scientific paper about spatial frequency analysis and brilliantly observed that "It's like a graph that is made by perceiving the graph itself." Over at Mind Hacks, Tom Stafford explains the science of spatial frequency, the same concept behind the classic "Marilyn Einstein" image below that was created by Aude Oliva in 2007. From Mind Hacks:

Spatial frequency means how often things change in space. High spatial frequency changes means lots of small detail. Spatial frequency is surprisingly important to our visual system – lots of basic features of the visual world, like orientation or motion, are processed first according to which spatial frequency the information is available at...

Spatial frequency is also why, when you’re flying over the ocean, you can see waves which appear not to move. Although your vision is sensitive enough to see the wave, the motion sensitive part of your visual system isn’t as good at the fine spatial frequencies – which creates a natural illusion of static waves.

See Einstein below? Now go a few steps back from your screen and look again:

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DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh has a line of fantastic spectacles for booji boys and girls. Guaranteed to help you stay focused on the smart patrol! Here's Mothersbaugh on how eyeglasses improved his vision, and his life:

I have a really bad astigmatism and extreme myopia. I could see just enough to make it around a room but kids would throw a ball, and it would hit me in the head. I was happy and just kept running around because I didn’t know that I was any different than anybody else. The teachers at school would ask me to read the board and I’d say, ‘What’s a board?’” and they’d put me in the corner. Finally they tested me, and it was like “Oh my God, he can’t see the big ‘E’ on an eye chart from 12 inches away.

So, I got glasses right before my eighth birthday, and in the car on the way home I remember seeing clouds and trees. I had never seen what the top of a tree looked like. I had never seen a roof of a house. I was stunned and excited. The next day, I was drawing pictures. I remember the teacher who had been totally frustrated with me and disciplining me every day said, “Mark, you draw trees better than me.” That was the first time a teacher had ever said anything nice. I was struck by it, because I had never had a teacher say anything positive to me in my life. And I remember that that night, I went home and had a dream that I was going to be an artist.

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"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."

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Turns out that long stints in outer space affect levels of cerebrospinal fluid. That explains why many astronauts who had 20/20 vision before space missions needed glasses upon return, according to a paper presented this week. Read the rest

A series of recent, influential design books and articles have convinced the web's designers to go for grey-on-white type, despite the fact that many people can't read low-contrast type (and it's even worse on mobile devices, which are often read in very bright sun, on screens that have been dimmed to save battery) Read the rest

Tommy Edison, the very funny "Blind Film Critic," who has been without sight since birth, answers the question: "Does it bother you that you don't know what you look like?"

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Who will be the first to say, "I saw the changes right away. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't be able to." Read the rest

TV astronomer and author Mark Thompson uses a pig eye he got from his local butcher to demonstrate what happens to people who make the mistake of looking at the sun through a telescope. Read the rest

Concetta Antico, who made the paintings above and below, is an artist known for being a tetrachromat, meaning a genetic difference in her eyes enables her to see approximately 100 times more colors than an average person. "I see colors you cannot perceive or imagine," Antico says. (Previous BB posts about Antico here and here.)

While the vast majority of peoples' eyes contain three kinds of cone sensitive to different wavelengths of light, tetrachromats have four. Apparently the genetic difference isn't very rare, but only a tiny fraction of those who have it actually develop unique perception. Why? UC Irvine researcher Kimberly Jameson and University of Nevada's Alissa Winkler studied Antico, another tetrachromat, and an artist with regular vision. From David Robson's article at BBC Future:

The experiment tested the participants’ sensitivity to different levels of "luminance! at certain wavelengths of light; put simply, with Antico’s eye’s extra cone, she should be picking up more light, meaning that she could see very subtle differences in the brightness of certain shades. Sure enough, Antico proved to be more sensitive than the average person, particularly when looking at reddish tones – a finding that perfectly matched the predictions from her genetic test.

As Jameson had suspected, Antico also performed much better than the other potential tetrachromat who was not an artist – supporting the idea that her colour training had been crucial for the development of her abilities.

Using these results, Jameson then reconstructed some photos to give us a better idea of the way the world may look to Antico.

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