This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Suspicious eyes — In the year 2001, US president George W. Bush foreshadowed a hope that decades later would pervade the robotics industry. Bush stood next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Slovenia […]
Research studies about things people can’t do, about putting eyes onto the front of automobiles, and about 57 people and a fake-food buffet are featured in the “Improbable Research Review” column in the special Super-Advanced Theories issue (volume 29, number 1) of the magazine. You can read that article free online. Better still, buy a copy […]
Gluing-on false eyelashes with cyanoacrylate (CA) adhesive – like say, Superglue™ – is widely regarded as a very bad idea. However, in the case that that one’s eyelids do get superglued™ together, and one presents oneself at a hospital casualty department, what can medics do to remove the glue? In 2008, a US-based research team investigated […]
An innovational study published in 2016 described how a photo of ‘Watching Eyes’ prominently displayed in the perianesthesia area of a busy hospital could encourage healthcare professionals to use the alcohol handrubs (AHRs) provided. But the experiment was not entirely problem free – some felt that the picture (which showed the eyes of a recognizable leader […]
Most news reports about science and medicine come from press releases, some of which contain a colorful statement and some padding, but no actual news. This press release from Texas A&M University shows how that’s done at the highest professional level: Can you sneeze with your eyes open? …David Huston, MD, associate dean of the Texas A&M College of […]
Does this study seem familiar to you? Did you move your eyes while trying to remember? “Why do we move our eyes while trying to remember? The relationship between non-visual gaze patterns and memory,” Dragana Micic, Howard Ehrlichman and Rebecca Chen, Brain and Cognition, 2010 Dec;74(3):210-24. The authors, at City University of New York (CUNY), […]
Many will recall the intense Feb. 2015 internet and media storm around the ‘is-it-black/blue’ or ‘is-it-white/gold’ Tumblr dress photo. It’s now become the focus of an international group of colour scientists, who have performed the first [we believe] laboratory-based study centering around the famous photo. The team, from the universities of Granada and Extremadura in […]
[Question: Why is a paper about artificial eye EYEBALL paints published in the the journal of Brazilian ORAL Research? See below for the answer.] If you’re an ocularist who creates bespoke hand-painted artificial eyes, presumably durability will be a prime concern. So, the question arises : Which kind of paint is best to colour-in the irises? […]
Sometimes, philosophers like to construct highly exaggerated imaginary scenarios in order to test the validity of theories – conjuring up, for example, human bodies with a pair of spare eyes in their shoulders. Since there’s no very little limit on how exaggerated such propositions might be, some take on outlandish proportions. Such ideas can push […]
If the history of ocularistry (artificial eye implementation) is of interest to you, may we recommend an article by retired ocularist Clyde W. Andrews, published in the fall 2005 issue of the Journal of Ophthalmic Prosthetics, My Work as an Eyemaker: The First 55 Years : “I have passed on my favorite (Windsor Newton) brush […]