The Glassmakers of Venice

Eyezone Blog - The Glassmakers of Venice

In the early 1200s in Venice, early craftsmen knew that shaping rock crystals into convex shapes could form “lapides ad legendum”, also called “oglarii di vitro”, or the so-called “stones for reading”. Regular use of these reading stones dated back to 1000 AD. However, the Capitulary of the Guild of “Crystal Craftsmen” allowed the use of these (more…)

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Keeping your eyes healthy this holiday


Seasons greetings! As the weather gets colder everyone gets busy. Your eyes have to last you a lifetime, so taking care of them is incredibly important. Your lifestyle can cause significant strain on your eye health and can have a harmful effect on your sight, especially as you grow older. Here are some Tips to take good care of your eye health…
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Drinking hot tea every day linked to lower glaucoma risk

Glaucoma causes fluid pressure to build up inside the eye (intraocular pressure), damaging the optic nerve. It is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide, and currently affects 57.5 million people, and is expected to increase to 65.5 million by 2020.
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Eyes into our small world: Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition 2017

Eyezone Blog - Eyes into the small world - Image 2

Running in its 43rd year, Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition is a science-focused photography competition that magnifies on anything that goes on under the microscope. With more than 2,000 entries from 88 different countries in 2017, the winning entries narrowed down to three prize winners, including 85 honorable mentions. (more…)

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Blind people “see” through brain maps

Eyezone Blog-Blind people have brain map for 'visual' observations too

Is what you’re looking at an object, a face, or a tree? When processing visual input, our brain uses different areas to recognize faces, body parts, scenes, and objects. Scientists at KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium, have now shown that people who were born blind use a ‘brain map’ with a very similar layout to distinguish between these same categories.

Our brain only needs a split second to determine what we’re seeing. The area in our brain that can categorize these visual observations so quickly is the so-called ventral-temporal cortex, the visual brain. Like a map, this region is divided into smaller regions, each of which recognizes a particular category of observations — faces, body parts, scenes, and objects. (more…)

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Vision loss linked to depression

The theme of World Health Day 2017 is depression. Various studies conducted by ophthalmologists and researchers show that adults with vision loss were 90 percent more likely to have clinical…

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Preserving vision for astronauts

Eyezone Blog-Preserving vision for astronauts
JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata sits in the chin rest during an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) session on ISS. Credit: NASA

Many astronauts who come back from space experience poorer vision after flight, some even years after, and researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are working to see why. (more…)

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UK sight charity helps over 1 million people in Rwanda

1 March 2017 – Vision for a Nation (VFAN) has now helped over one million people to access eye care services across Rwanda. The award-winning UK charity has supported Rwanda’s Ministry of…

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