StemCell Therapy

Rubin Jure

Director, Centro Privado de Neurologa y Neuropsicologa Infanto-Juvenil Wernicke

The ability to see plays a large role in the development of the brain so it makes sense that there would be a connection between vision and autism, which is essentially a condition of brain development.

When the eyes are open, vision is the dominant sense. Continuous input from the eyes links stimulation from other senses into a coherent whole.

A typical newborn already looks preferentially at faces, driven by an innate motivation to interact with others1. In this way, vision drives social-communication skills. Visual input shapes the brain during the first year of life. The visual system also processes aspects of nonverbal communication, such as shared visual attention, facial expressions, gestures and body postures.

Sight is also crucial for acquiring some basic concepts such as cause-and-effect relationships among actions, self as separate from others and object permanence.

So it stands to reason that without vision, brain development would go awry.

As a child neurologist, I treat children with various developmental disabilities, including autism. Every year, I see at least one blind child who shows the full clinical manifestations of autism. Because congenital blindness is rare, this was striking to me, particularly because the autism traits in these children are typically severe.

In 2012, I decided to investigate the relationship between autism and blindness in an unbiased population. Although the study was small, it indicated that autism is more than 30 times as common in blind people as in sighted people2. Other work from my team suggests this relationship is specific to vision: Hearing impairment is not strongly connected to autism3. The association is also independent of intellectual ability, showing that problems with cognition alone cannot explain the connection4.

The first report of autism in blind children appeared in more than 60 years ago5. In that study, the researcher identified autism in 5 of 60 infants who became blind because of retinopathy of prematurity, a condition in which the retina does not fully develop. (The rest of the children also had mild autism traits.)

Since then, scattered reports have drawn an association between congenital blindness and autism traits. But professionals typically did not recognize childrens social and other difficulties as autism often because they did not know much about autism. Instead they collectively called these issues blindism.

To a seasoned eye, the similarities between blindism and autism are striking. They include atypical communication, language and social skills, as well as stereotypies, resistance to change, severe anxiety and high pain tolerance. And like sighted autistic children, about one in four blind children experiences regression at 15 to 30 months of age.

To find out more about this connection, I visited a school for the blind and evaluated 38 of the schools 125 students for autism. I diagnosed autism in 18 of 25 students with congenital blindness but in only 1 of 13 with partial or acquired blindness. A statistical analysis showed that congenital blindness is the main factor responsible for the autism. No other variable, including etiology of blindness, the presence of intellectual disability, overt brain damage or socioeconomic status, accounted for its high prevalence2.

As part of this study, I evaluated 12 previous studies of blindness and autism. Each study focused on specific causes of blindness, under the assumption that the participants autism stemmed from the same cause say, congenital rubella or optic nerve atrophy. But I found that, taken together, the studies suggest that blindness itself (no matter what its cause) is connected to autism: About half of the collective 859 children who were blind from an early age also have autism. The rate of autism was even higher, ranging from 55 to 74 percent, in children with total congenital blindness.

Some researchers have proposed that the connection between autism and blindness is cognitive. Results published earlier this year suggest that idea is incorrect, however.

This population-based study looked at core autism traits in more than 3,000 adults with intellectual disability, 386 of whom are visually impaired. They found that the visually impaired adults with intellectual disability are more likely to have autism traits than the sighted adults, indicating that the effects of blindness extend beyond intellect. And once again, the prevalence of autism traits is highest among the adults with congenital blindness4.

My clinical experience jibes with the notion that intellectual disability is not what binds blindness and autism. There are highly intelligent people who are both blind and autistic. For example, I saw a congenitally blind teenage girl named Brisa who has social and communication difficulties as well as atypical prosody, the musical quality of speech. Brisa has excellent reasoning skills and excels academically.

Among the senses, vision also may have a special connection with autism. In 1991, we found that only 46 of 1,150 hearing-impaired children met the criteria for autism. The presence of autism is related more to medical conditions that affect the brain, such as congenital rubella or prematurity, than to the severity of the hearing impairment, suggesting that deafness itself does not contribute to autism3.

Researchers need to nail down the brain mechanisms that account for the autism-blindness overlap. One place to start looking is a brain region called the superior colliculus. This structure receives direct input from the retina. It is involved in not only the recognition of faces and biological movement but also the integration of sensory input with emotions, basic body functions and motor planning functions that are often altered in autism6.

Another outstanding question is: Why does a small proportion of congenitally blind children develop typically? Early in life, communication is mostly visual in nature, so how do some blind children acquire communication and social skills despite the lack of visual input? Understanding the factors that protect them could provide clues to autism therapies.

Rubin Jure is a child neurologist and director of the Centro Privado de Neurologa y Neuropsicologa Infanto-Juvenil Wernicke in Cordoba, Argentina.

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Seeing connections between autism and blindness - Spectrum

Just past the front desk of the Milwaukee Public Librarys Central Branch on West Wisconsin Avenue, theres a hallway you have to walk through to get to the stacks. Through the end of November, that hallway will be lined with a series of striking black and white photographic portraits.

The "My Heart Is Not Blind" exhibition is made up of photographs, a book, and audio recordings by Texas photographer Michael Nye. They tell the stories of people who have been affected by blindness or limited vision. Nye says he's been working on the project for seven years. The exhibition was brought to Milwaukee by Wisconsins Vision Forward, a nonprofit group that works with people who've experienced vision loss.

"This exhibit is about our shared humanity and our shared fragility," says Nye. "I think we all share both of those qualities in our lives. And its about adaptation and about perception, and its about understanding."

We met Nye at Milwaukee Public Library's Central Branch to see the exhibit and learn more about why he was compelled to tell these stories:

Photographer Michael Nye speaks with Bonnie North at the Milwaukee Public Library's Central Branch.

Read more here:
'My Heart Is Not Blind' Exhibition Explores Blindness And Perception - WUWM

In 2008, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had six times more blindness than other Australians. The leading cause of this blindness was unoperated cataract.

Compared with other Australians, Indigenous Australians were 12 times more likely to be left blind from cataract, had to wait more than 50 per cent longer for surgery and surgery was performed seven times less frequently.

These dire findings, along with some others, led to the development of the Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision launched in 2012.

The Roadmap recognised that the pathway of care or the patients journey was complex like a leaky pipe with many leaks. But if only one or two of these leaks were fixed, the pipe would still leak.

As part of this work, the Roadmap identified 42 issues that needed addressing. It set out a long-term plan to provide well-coordinated care and support for Indigenous people requiring eye care.

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It aimed for adequately resourced and supported eye services to meet the population-based needs of these communities.

The good news is that since 2012, some significant progress has been made with strong support from the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector, the eye care stakeholders and successive governments.

But more needs to be done.

The 2019 report on Indigenous Eye Health Measures by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows that the number of outreach eye examinations received by Indigenous Australians has almost tripled in the last six years.

This is one of many changes that have occurred in the eye care system, including the organisation of regional networks to coordinate regional eye care, changes in Medicare item numbers, the enhancement of screening for diabetic retinopathy and the dramatic reductions in the rates of trachoma.

The 2019 Annual Update of the Roadmap shows that good progress is being made across the board. Twenty one of the 42 recommendations have now been fully implemented.

Progress is being made on every one of the intermediary steps and almost 80 per cent have been completed.

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Progress has also been made in providing better access for cataract surgery. The number of cataract operations performed for Indigenous Australians has increased nearly two and a half times.

Its interesting that the AIHW data also shows that Indigenous people have cataract surgery at a much younger age than non-Indigenous people.

However, the 2015 National Eye Health Survey found only 59 per cent of Indigenous Australians who needed cataract surgery had actually had the surgery, whereas 88 per cent for non-Indigenous Australians had received surgery.

Overall, 73 per cent of all hospital admissions for Indigenous Australians are to public hospitals compared to 33 per cent for non-Indigenous Australians.

However, in Australia, some 70 per cent of cataract surgery is performed in private. Although the precise data is not available, it seems likely that most cataract surgery for Indigenous Australians occurs in public hospitals.

The average waiting time for Indigenous patients to have cataract surgery in a public hospital in 2016-17 was 58 per cent longer than that for non-Indigenous patients and they were also twice as likely to wait for more than one year.

Based on population size, we would expect about 7,581 cataract operations would be required in 2015-17 for Indigenous people, but AIHW reports only 5,131 operations were done that is 68 per cent of the estimated need.

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This gap of 2,400 or so operations is very small when compared to the total of 296,570 cataract operations performed in 2017-18 in Australia.

Another problem that is so often overlooked is the waiting times for assessment of cataract in the eye clinic.

But, the data on outpatient waiting times is not easy to find and variably reported.

In Victorian hospitals, the median wait for an initial eye clinic appointment ranges from 62 days to 347 days 90 per cent of people would be seen between 159 and 828 days.

In South Australia, the median waiting time is between 12 and 18 months and the maximum waiting time is between 61 months to 134 months thats more than 11 years.

Clearly, the public hospital system is not working well in providing equitable and timely cataract surgery.

Given the propensity for Indigenous patients to seek public hospital care, this actually has a discriminatory effect, so its a key area that needs to be addressed if we really are going to close the gap for vision.

The Roadmap also included recommendations for regional planning and organisation, case management and support, resources to meet population-based needs, monitoring and evaluation and the need for oversight at multiple levels.

This list needs to be expanded to include some reform of the public hospital management of cataract surgery.

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In March this year, the Council of Australian Governments Health Council set the elimination of avoidable blindness as a high priority issue for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and this also is one of the priorities in Australias Long Term National Health Plan.

However, to improve access to cataract surgery and close the gap for vision, a number of further changes are needed.

The regional stakeholder groups need their services fully funded to meet their population-based needs. People requiring assessment for cataract surgery should have access to public hospitals without long waits and, if that clinical assessment has to be done in private, it should be done without gap fees.

Then, once listed for cataract surgery, that surgery must be done in a timely manner.

Public hospitals should report on their waiting lists both for clinical assessment and for surgery. And a wait of less than 90 days should become the standard target for both the clinical assessment and the surgery waiting times.

Although a lot of progress has been made in improving eye care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, there is still a gap in the eye care they receive and their eye health.

One of the critical areas remaining is the provision of prompt access to culturally safe and affordable cataract surgery.

It means much still needs to be done to rectify the often unacceptably long waiting times for both outpatient assessment and cataract surgery in Australias public hospitals.

Banner: Getty Images

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Can we close the gap on blindness by 2020? - Pursuit

We all are exposed daily to bisphenol-A (BPA) and other bisphenols estrogen-like substances added to food can liners, paper receipts and plastic containers.

That exposure, according to research that regulators are willfully ignoring, is increasingly linked to harmful health impacts ranging from birth defects to cancer.

A year-long investigation by Environmental Health News finds that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stacked the deck against such findings from independent scientists studying BPA as well as many compounds used in "BPA-free" products.

Hundreds of emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and dozens of interviews show that science is being perjured:

Significantly, the FDA's maneuvering to keep BPA unregulated extends a similar "get out of jail free" card to thousands of other suspected hormone-altering compounds.

"Their failure to use modern science in examining the risk of BPA and other bisphenols leaves the health of the American public at significant risk," said Pete Myers, founder and chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, which publishes Environmental Health News.

Environmental Health News is an award-winning nonpartisan organization dedicated to driving science into public discussion and policy. Read the four-part series below, as well as a comic strip interpretation of the investigation.

And follow the fallout from this investigation on Twitter at the hashtag: #ExposedBPA

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Exposed: How willful blindness keeps BPA on shelves and contaminating our bodies - Environmental Health News

Congenital vision loss may protect against psychosis because of the high stability of an internal world characterized by other sensory modalities, according to an article published in Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Dr Thomas A Pollack and Dr Philip R Corlett, researchers at Kings College London in the United Kingdom and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, respectively, used a Bayesian prediction error minimization model to illuminate the role of vision loss in psychosis, particularly regarding positive symptoms.

The Bayesian approach to psychosis in schizophrenia conceptualizes the brain as a hierarchicalinference machine: the brain interprets the probability of present events using information gleaned from past stimuli, or priors. The more precise a prior, the more strongly it influences decision making and beliefs at higher levels in the hierarchy. In schizophrenia, this hierarchy is disturbed, and irrelevant stimuli may become abnormally salient.[to] beliefs higher in the hierarchy.

Congenital blindness may protect against these computational deficits that underlie schizophrenia. Investigators hypothesize that blind individuals experience greater stability of high-level priors, possibly driven by increases in N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR)-mediated signaling. NMDAR-mediated signaling is thought to be top-down and modulatory in nature. Visual deprivation has been shown to cause higher-level, multisensory neurons to shift from sensory-driven responses to a more modulatory influence, a phenomenon that is likely NMDAR dependent.

According to the researchers, other published data suggest that visual deprivation causes increases in NMDAR-dependent cortical excitability. As such, increased top-down modulatory signaling associated with stable higher-level priors is more prevalent in the visually impaired brain. This computational rationale may explain the protective effect congenital blindness offers against psychosis. With more stable priors, blind individuals are less susceptible to the perception abnormalities that characterize schizophrenia.

Notably, later-life vision loss offers no such protective effect against psychosis. The top-down model cortical hierarchy asserts that the brain is equipped with hyperpriors, or internal expectations concerning perceived features of the world. In psychosis, a hyperprior may generate false attributions of the causes of sensory input. According to this same model, hyperpriors also predispose the developmentally typical brain to have visual hallucinations following visual deprivation because the brain expects a cause for sensory data. In the absence of visual information, the brain creates false external attributions, which manifest as hallucinations.

According to this model, investigators outlined several experimentally testable hypotheses, including the theory that congenitally blind individuals will show lessened psychosis-proneness compared with their sighted counterparts and lower psychotomimetic response to ketamine. The Bayesian error minimization model may be useful in further efforts to explore the nature of psychosis, vision loss, and visual hallucinations.

Reference

Pollack TA, Corlett PR. Blindness, psychosis, and the visual construction of the world [published online October 11, 2019]. Schizophr Bull. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbz098

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How Does a Visual Construction of the World Influence Psychosis? - Psychiatry Advisor

Mona Minkarastood on a train platform in Johannesburg, South Africa, tapping at her phone in frustration. The GPS was malfunctioning and the devices automated voice kept repeating that there was no transit information available.

Minkara, a newly appointed assistant professor of bioengineering at Northeastern, has been blind since she was seven years old. She was in Johannesburg filming the first part of a documentary series demonstrating how she navigates public transportation around the world.

I always tell people I cant wait to get lost, Minkara says. Sometimes society tells you, Youre blind, so you cant do this. So my freedom matters so much to me.

In July, Minkara was awarded the Holman Prize by LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which is given to individuals who are blind and want to push their limits with some sort of groundbreaking adventure. The award is named for James Holman, a blind, Victorian-era explorer who spent years traveling the world alone and successfully circumnavigated the globe.

As with Holman, Minkaras adventure is rooted in solo exploration. She started with a trip to Johannesburg in October. In December, she will fly to London, and explore Istanbul, Singapore, and Tokyo before returning home. She is traveling with a videographer, but the woman is not allowed to help her in any way other than by filming what happens.

The footage will be made into a five-episode documentary series called Planes, Trains, and Canes, which will be released on YouTube in 2020. Minkara intends the series to show how blind people deal with different public transportation systems, and that adventure is possible for anyone.

It gives me a sense of freedom, to be in a city that has good public transportation, Minkara says. It means I can do my own thing for myself. Thats huge.

At Northeastern, Minkara is using her background in computational chemistry to study molecules that reside on the inner surface of our lungs, called pulmonary surfactants. They reduce the surface tension of water, which allows our lungs to expand more easily, helping us breathe.

Minkara will be modeling this substance at the molecular level. Her work could help researchers understand how vaping affects our lung function, as well as lead to better treatments for diseases such as respiratory distress syndrome.

To do her research, Minkara works with access assistants who take notes, proof-read publications, and trace the shape of plots on the back of Minkaras hand, so she can understand what they look like. Their assistance is invaluable, Minkara says, but she hopes blind researchers will have more tools in the future, such as tactile plots or braille displays, that could provide tangible access to the different images they are working with.

Minkara, who grew up watching The Magic School Bus and reading stories of Sherlock Holmes, knew she wanted to be a scientist. Her blindness didnt change that goal.

I actually started out undergrad wanting to be a surgeon, she says with a laugh. I remember having a conversation with the pre-med advisor saying something like, Would you want a blind person cutting up your brain? And I thought, Hmm, maybe were not ready yet, as a society.

Instead, Minkara pursued computational chemistry. When she took a postdoctoral position at the University of Minnesota, her advisor, J. Ilja Siepmann, helped Minkara realize that her blindness was actually a strength in scientific research.

Siepmann pointed out that being blind had taught Minkara to think differently and solve problems in creative ways. He wanted her in his lab because those skills would help her approach research questions from different angles, and see things that a sighted person might miss.

It just floored me, Minkara says. It was the first time in my professional life in which somebody saw my blindness as an asset, when I had felt like I needed to keep on running to keep up with my peers.

And she envisions a future with a lot more blind researchers.

There are a lot of hurdles, but I personally feel like theyre worth overcoming, Minkara says. I want to be there for kids that are trying to be scientists and are blind. Or really, any kid that is trying to do something that society thinks they cant.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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A bioengineering researcher who studies how vaping affects lung function sees a future with more blind scientists - News@Northeastern

Most blind people have some light perception but I'm one of the 2pc that have total darkness. I was born with retinoblastoma, an extremely rare cancer of the eye, and by four months old, both my eyes had been removed.

My parents had a fruit farm in Kildare and when I was born in the mid 1970s, there was no internet, no support groups.

I think they did not know what approach to take and so decided to treat me exactly the same as my younger twin sisters. They worked tremendously hard and everyone had to pitch in; blindness was no excuse. Their work ethic rubbed off on me, and I could not imagine a life without work.

The profit mentality

I left a secure and pensionable job with the National Council for the Blind (NCBI) to set up the Irish operations of Sight and Sound Technology, a 40-year-old company that provides hardware and software for the blind, visually impaired, and for people with learning and reading difficulties.

People told me I was insane and questioned would a British company remain in Ireland post-Brexit. But one year on, there are not enough hours in the day for me to keep up with the work.

I had worked in the technology area in the NCBI, so I knew there was a market here.

My main motivation is to provide a quality product that can help people, and I don't want to lose my values. It is hard to balance with the pressure that a profit has to be made for the shareholders.

Learning curve

The first two months were tricky. I had spent 17 years surrounded by colleagues and suddenly it was just me. I was walking 40 minutes to sit in an empty office and bang out emails to tell people who we were. I confided my difficulties to my boss and he told me I could arrange my working life any way I preferred.

So now I work from home, and come into the office when meeting people, and we have hired someone to help with admin. My mental health is better working from home. I go to a lot of events and travel quite a bit anyway, on average three times a month to the UK.

Usability is key

What we do is integrate specialist solutions into mainstream technology, to make it more accessible for the blind, visually impaired, and those with learning and reading difficulties.

I have a braille keyboard with the usual commands of a regular keyboard. I will either listen to my emails, or else use a refreshable braille display, that shows a series of pins raised and lowered. I can also plug in this braille display to my phone or my Kindle.

Zoom text magnification software and background readers are lifelines for those with impaired sight, and now applications read verbally from the screen in high-quality synthetic speech - which is crucial.

I have proved to be great quality control. Although I can read graphs in braille, I was finding that the most difficult part of my job was interpreting financial data with lots of figures and spreadsheets. Up until then, my colleagues did not have a blind person working as their equal, so it has been helpful in pinpointing where we need to improve usability. No matter how good technology is, it has to be easy to use, otherwise it's useless.

Advance schmoozing

I've learned that the trick with networking at conferences is to do most of my schmoozing beforehand. I will get a list of who is going and try to build a rapport by email before I go.

My phone is useful when looking for a person. I will ask at the desk to check who has registered and then can send a message to say I will be at this stand at 10.30am.

I'm really specific, but there is subtlety; I make it look seamless.

Otherwise, people say 'great, see you there', but I'm never going to spot someone across a room and I have to make it concrete.

Everyone has their own perceptions of their world as they know it. In an ideal world, all would be treated equally, and there is no doubt that society is getting better. The technology is improving, and getting cheaper, all the time and I'm hoping in time there will be more employment opportunities for the blind.

Compartmentalising

Myself and my fiance (Paralympian Nadine Lattimore) had our son Adam six months ago. This has thrown a grenade into my work-life balance; it is the biggest challenge I have faced and I have not yet got it right.

I do find it difficult to stop working and find myself sending emails with Adam on my lap. I just dislike putting off until tomorrow what I can do today.

It can be challenging for a blind person to find accessible fitness activities, but I've started walking more, with Adam strapped to my chest in the baby carrier.

Living your life

Nadine lost her sight 14 years ago and I do feel that growing up blind from birth, I have had an easier time of it.

My reality is normal for me. If I was offered sight back, I'm not sure what I would do. I think about this question a lot. It would be a huge disruption and throw my life right out of kilter.

People always ask how we manage with a newborn. But looking after a baby is such a tactile process; we have had no problems, it's been a joy. I know I have a higher risk of getting cancer again but I don't give it much thought; my life is to be lived now and it's a wonderful one.

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'Everyone had to pitch in on the farm, blindness was no excuse' - Independent.ie

The government won't say the words 'climate change' and 'fires' in the same sentence.

A great deal of NSW is currently on fire. It is Spring.

Usually that kind of environmental devastation begins, at worst, in Summer. So many blazes, particularly at this time of year, is worryingly out of the ordinary.

Of course, we all knew that something like this was coming. Weve been warned for decades that climate change was set to increase the number of freak weather events, and that the drought would continue to dry out our natural woodlands, making blazes inevitable.

But just try telling that to Australias politicians. After all, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison have spent every hour since the blazes began vehemently attempting to deny any link between the destruction and climate change.

According to them, its not right to politicise the blazes. Instead, we should simply mourn a problem while obstinately, repeatedly ignoring its causes.

Its enough to make you weep. Or, at least, thanks to those folks over at SBSsThe Feed, to weep while bitterly laughing.

Yep,The Feed have dusted off their best yellow wig, and filmed a sketch lampooning the governments almost pathological inability to say the words climate change and fire in the same sentence.

Beginning with an itemised list of the public figures that have gone on the record to draw the line between environmental collapse and our changing climate, the sketch descends into pure, hysterical surreality, as the governments obstinance slowly morphs into straight-up denial.

Watch it through your tears here:

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NSW Fires: 'The Feed' Blasts Government's Blindness On Climate Change - Junkee

Leave a Legacy SupplementChai Brady speaks to Sightsavers about the devastating diseases and blindness they combat

Easily treated diseases that are now quickly tackled in the Western world with readily available medicines are still a scourge in developing countries, with blindness being one of the devastating outcomes.

Charlie Lamson, CEO of Sightsavers, told The Irish Catholic that it wasnt so long ago that countries like Ireland were struggling with diseases, such as Trachoma, easily treatable at its early stage with antibiotics.

Returning from Senegal recently, Mr Lamson saw first-hand the effects of Trachoma, and how the horrific disease develops. Working in over 30 countries the charity assist communities, governments and train local staff who will stay in the country helping those in need.

The way we work is a collaborative approach, the country office works with local partners and then works with the ministry of health, so a lot of what were doing is based on working directly with the countries, Mr Lamson says.

Were not just flying in, doing all this great stuff, and then flying out again. Its very much about working with government ministries to create genuine change in the way that they approach the challenges they have.

In 2018 the charity carried out more than 16 million eye examinations across the countries in which they work, and distributed more than 113 million treatments to prevent and treat debilitating diseases.

Sightsavers first programmes began in the 1950s, starting in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, with several other African countries following in the next two decades.

In the 1960s and 70s this was expanded into Asia with their first projects in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The charity also continued to extend their work across Africa. More recently, their work in Yemen began in 2018.

Their work in Sri Lanka came to an end in 2016, which was the first time the charity finished working in a country as they were satisfied that they eye care services they set up would continue without them.

Mentioning Francis Ford Coppolas film, The Godfather Part II, when fictional character Vito Corleones eyes are checked for Trachoma before he enters New York from Sicily, Mr Lamson says this is an example of how the Western world was once challenged with the disease.

All of the support thats provided to older people through a wealthy society, a modern economy, if you were to remove all of that and then find yourself in a very poor economy without any of those structures in place its very devastating.

Trachoma is the worlds leading infectious cause of blindness, and is part of a group of conditions known as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Much like conjunctivitis it starts as a bacterial infection, but if it is not treated it can become unbearable.

Over time it causes scarring to the eyelid that pulls the eyelashes inward, so with every blink they scrape against the eye. This advanced form is called trichiasis and is so intensely painful that people afflicted resort to pulling out their eyelashes due to the agony of blinking.

The disease thrives where there are water shortages, poor sanitation and infestations of flies. Its caused byrepeated infection with bacteriaknown as chamydia trachomatis, and it spreads through contact with infected flies and via hands, clothes or bedding that have been in contact with an infected person.

Mr Lamson says they are working on a campaign called The End is in Sight, which endeavours to eliminate the disease by 2025. Currently there are still 44 countries that count the disease as a public health problem.

We train ophthalmologists, ophthalmic surgeons, ophthalmic nurses, were working with ministries of health around things like budgeting and long term planning, all of these, he says.

The result of this will be a trained medical professional from the country who will stay there and continue to work with people. In addition to training, they provide expertise and medical equipment, with Mr Lamson saying the model is based on true sustainable development.

***

Trachoma is not the only disease the charity is combatting. River blindness is a parasitic infection spread by flies near fast flowing rivers and can cause severe irritation, itching and even blindness if the infection is not treated.

Mr Lamson says: Were not working directly with river blindness in Senegal, although we do see it for example in Ghana. One of my colleagues was down there and has unbelievable stories.

You see a whole village river blindness can affect up to 70% of a community when it really takes hold, and 40 years ago that would be the case. She visited a community in Ghana and was interviewing seniors within the community. She interviewed about five or six people, all of them were blind as a result of river blindness.

The community his colleague visited had to abandon their former village to move further away from the river, due to the prevalence of river blindness.

The community was dying, the young people all moving away, you were left with a lot of visually impaired seniors in the community so it was devastating, to see the pictures and hear her talk about it, he says.

River blindness is interesting because it can take years for it to manifest before it then starts to manifest in the eye and cause vision loss.

When someone is bitten by the flies, larvae invade the body and develop into worms that can live for 15 years. Female worms produce thousands of microscopic larvae each day known as microfilariae which spread through the body and can be passed on to others. When the microfilariae die, they cause a reaction leading to immense irritation, inflammation and itching. If the larvae travel to the eyes, it can cause irreversible sight loss.

As well as pain, blindness and the associated stigma, river blindness forces people to move away from fertile river valleys where the disease is prevalent. As a result, they can struggle to find suitable areas to farm or grow crops, pushing families and communities into poverty.

However, treatment is relatively cheap, with Mr Lamson saying 50 can protect 1,000 people from river blindness. The medication comes in the form of tablets and a simple method used to gauge the height of a person informs what dose someone should be given.

Almost all of usare going to be disabled, and the majority are going to face that disability when we get to that age in our lives, when were older

The instrument is called a dose pole, which is tall and colourful, with each colour having dots representing how many tablets should be given depending on a persons height.

For example if a person is 172cm, the dose pole would be placed beside them and would show they need three tablets. Due to some community members being wary of the medicines, Mr Lamson explains, having community directed distributors (CDDs) is a huge benefit.

People from within the community are each given a dose pole, which is easy to use regardless of literacy levels, and they can be trained and subsequently trusted to treat other members of the community properly.

The added benefit is the distributors are nominated by their local community and are therefore ideally placed to deliver the medication as they understand the communitys dynamics and customs, enabling Sightsavers to deliver aid to those who need help the most and ensure that people in the most poor or remote areas are treated.

***

One of the most vital parts of the charitys ability to continue with these, and other life-changing initiatives is through their legacy donations.

Legacy donations are critical, its a huge part of our work. Oftentimes a legacy giftwe can use in the areas that we need it most, which is really important, says Mr Lamson.

Its such a personal form of support for us. We recently have a number of legacy gifts come through and weve ended up getting some absolutely incredible letters from the family who are talking about the person who had passed away and how this was important for them, in that they had wanted to do something and they had chosen us because they had known something about us. Or theyd been giving to us for years as a regular donor, and theyd receive our correspondence.

A lot of what were trying to do is tell people about what it is that were doing. Whats wonderful to me is that a lot of people feel moved by that enough and trusting enough of the work that were doing.

Reflecting on the disparity of opportunity and affluence between the Western world and developing countries such as the ones the charity works with in West Africa, Mr Lamson says since he started with Sightsavers two years ago it really struck him how eye glasses in Senegal are not common the percentage of people who have them is extremely low and in rural communities its almost zero.

I do a fair number of presentations and things like that, and if Im sitting with an audience, and I were to ask everyone to take off their glasses, half the audience wouldnt be able to see the presentation, he said.

You think about the impact of eye glasses, how we take them so much for granted, and if you were suddenly to say none of us could have eye glasses the impact on our lives at a personal level, on the community where we live, on the whole functioning of our society. If you were to remove the capacity of people who need eye glasses to get through the day thats a big one.

Almost all of us at some point in our lives are going to be disabled, and the majority are going to face that disability when we get to that age in our lives, when were older.

Sightsavers also do large amounts of work to promote inclusive societies for the disabled, whether in education, employment, healthcare or politics.

In Senegal the charitys inclusive education pilot project was launched in three schools in Dakar in 2014. Part of this was to work with the General Directorate of Social Action to provide scholarships to blind students, they also give financial assistance to parents, translate textbooks to braille, adapt school facilities, certify children as visually impaired and provide eye care through the Senegal eye care programme, including low vision aids, braille and referrals for treatment such as cataract surgery, to name a few.

If youre talking about an underdeveloped economy like Senegal, where you have 54% illiteracy and then you throw on top of that those who are disabled, or have a vision impairment then you really are at the end of the line there, so were trying to work with those guys, Mr Lamson added.

While Sightsavers work in a variety of countries across the world, at times some communities and societies are in greater need of immediate action to mitigate harm. Legacy donations, Mr Lamson explains, help the charity to pour resources and initiate positive change quickly; protecting eyes against blindness and disease and combatting exclusion because of disability.

Related

See the rest here:
An end to Trachoma blindness is in sight - The Irish Catholic

Brittany Howards new album, Jaime, is her first solo effort. The project takes its name and inspiration from her older sister, who died in 1998 after a battle with retinoblastoma, a disease Howard herself has dealt with, causing partial blindness in one eye.

The singer, now 31, was inspired by her sister to write poetry and play music. And she has made a life of it.

After two hugely successful albums with Alabama Shakes, Howard who plays Denver on November 14 and Boulder on November 15 has blossomed with Jaime, which is genre-defying, powerful and at times downright funky and fun.

Westword caught up with her to discuss her tour and the new album.

Westword: I saw this video of you saying how excited you are about this tour, and as the camera zoomed out, you were getting a mani and a pedi at the same time.

Brittany Howard: [Laughs.] Oh, yeah, sometimes that happens. You know, we treat ourselves every once in a while.

How important is it to have a sense of humor on the road, with all the stress?

Massively important. Otherwise, who knows what could happen? Its super-important for anyones well-being.

Have you discovered the things on the road, over the years, that you should absolutely do and absolutely not do?

You should absolutely not go out every night after a show. Absolutely do drink lots of water and make sure you sleep a lot.

Youve played in Colorado quite a bit. Do you have a specific feeling about the area?

Yeah, the crowds are usually pretty cool in Denver; theyre a real chill, laid-back, cool bunch of open-minded people.

What was it like opening for Neil Young at Red Rocks?

That was one of my favorite shows ever. I got to meet Mr. Young and talk some. It was really cool.

The new album is obviously your first solo record. What were the biggest differences writing and recording as Brittany Howard rather than as Alabama Shakes?

Just the freedom to make whatever choices I want, whether theyre good choices or bad choices. Its just fun to make those choices and get to paint my own picture how I envision it, how I hear it. I think thats been the biggest difference, just steering my own ship. Touring, its been interesting because I play less guitar when Im on stage, so Ive been really exploring what its like to just be so open to a crowd when Im on stage. Its been new and cool.

I heard you were a big fan of AC/DC growing up. How did you discover that place where Bon Scott might meet Aretha Franklin or Nina Simone?

I think the cross-section would be just performing from a real place. You know, theres a difference between just performing and making tons of dough, and being a performer because your spirit needs to do it. I think thats the difference between something good and something great.

There seems to be a parallel between your new album and the new records by Sturgill Simpson and also St. Paul and the Broken Bones. These artists who come from a rootsy background and are now just shattering boundaries. How did you get to that place where virtually anything can be a Brittany Howard song?

I mean, Ive never liked musical boundaries, just because it puts a limit on what you can do creatively. If its fun to do a little concept record or whatever, then do it. If its fun to mix and match everything youve heard before, do it.

How do you carry where you come from with you on stage every night, and writing? How much Alabama do you keep with you?

Well, its always ingrained in me. I think, for me, I feel pretty empowered to come from Alabama, just because the history is so radical and challenging. For me, just existing came from overcoming those things, so Im very much proud to be an Alabamian and just stand on stage and say, Yeah, this is me. Im a pretty radical person, and I come from a place thats considered so conservative, backwards. But guess what? Im from there, so can it be all that you think it is? Its kind of neat in a way to be this sort of un-elected ambassador.

Do you feel like a role model for young black women who might not have seen a black woman with a guitar fronting a rock band before?

I could see how someone would think like that, just because Im different to see on a stage as far as media goes. You dont usually see someone who looks like me doing what I do. I think thats cool. Its something that I definitely wouldve appreciated, being younger, seeing something like that and being like, Oh, thats me! I have options for what I can do with my life. Its not up to anything I see on television. On the other hand, Im just walking around like everybody else; its not like I behave or act according to what anybody made for me. I think Im really just being the best self I can be for myself. If that inspires other people, then awesome. I really want them to do the same thing.

The new album was inspired by your late sister. Do you feel her presence on stage every night as you play these songs?

Yeah, I do especially when Im tired and I need a little extra strength. But then, also its a kind of everyday relationship when you lose somebody close to you. It doesnt mean theyre gone. Its not really how it works. Its not like the movies, you know? That presence is always with you, always trying to get you through whatever youre trying to get through. I live my life in my sisters presence and memory, so of course when I made this record, it only made sense to just say Thank you, you know?

Your favorite song with her was Dont Worry Be Happy, by Bobby McFerrin. Since she passed away, what new music have you heard that you think you would have bonded over?

I dont know probably anything I liked. She had really good taste. Im not sure if she wouldve gone the pop way or more the avant-garde way. Its hard to say.

So many people have heard you sing Hold On," and sometimes during powerful, trying times in their lives. Its an empowering statement, but it prompts the question, just how do you hold on?

I guess its different in every situation. I think a massive part of it is giving yourself a break, and feeling whatever it is youre going through. Just experience that and sit with that, knowing its not going to kill you to feel sad, or to feel down for a moment, because happiness is always kinda coming around. Its never permanent. Youre not alone in that, and its just a normal part of being a human being. Things can get easier. And also, I really believe things work out the way theyre meant to if we kinda stay out of the way, so to speak. Things sort themselves out eventually, no matter how painful the experience might be. I think you just gotta remember that and stand in awe of that, that we all have something to offer.

Brittany Howard, with Georgia Anne Muldrow, plays at 8 p.m. Thursday, November 14, at the Ogden Theatre. 935 East Colfax Avenue. For tickets and more information, go to ogdentheatre.com. Howard and Muldrow also play at 8:30 p.m. Friday, November 15, at the Boulder Theater, 14th Street, Boulder. For tickets and more information, go to bouldertheater.com.

Pittsburgh native Adam Perry is a cyclist, drummer and University of Pittsburgh and Naropa University alum. He lives in Boulder and has written for Westword since 2008.

Read the rest here:
Brittany Howard on Freedom and Taking a Break From Alabama Shakes - Westword

MOVIES

9:41 AM PST 11/6/2019byJohn DeFore

You've heard of face-blindness, the phenomenon in which a patient can't recognize the person in front of her without resorting to clues like the stranger's voice and clothing. That's an unbelievable but real affliction. But what about person-blindness, in which someone becomes completely unable to see a specific person in her life, or even to sense them in any other way? Buying into that unlikely conceit is the first of several tough hurdles to appreciating Love Is Blind, Monty Whitebloom and Andy Delaney's romance about a lovely, lonely girl who can't see how many people adore her. A pretty fable (the directors made music videos in the 1990s for the Spice Girls and Paula Abdul) that drowns in its own preciousness, it might have remained unreleased if not for a familiar cast including Matthew Broderick and Chloe Sevigny as the heroine's parents.

As far as Shannon Tarbet's Bessie knows, she only has one surviving parent, Broderick's Murray. She thinks her mother died long ago, and that Murray's continuing references to her are caused by dementia linked to Parkinson's disease. Sevigny's Carolyn calmly deals with being ignored, describing her daughter as a nutcase and seeming to know, deep down, that she caused this delusion herself by being a lousy mother.

If that sounds like a shaky assumption to make about a mental disorder, Jennifer Schuur's screenplay is even less convincing in its approach to autism. Bess has long been seeing a psychotherapist (Benjamin Walker's Farmer Smithson) who describes himself as "on the spectrum," and much of his behavior here is dubious. For instance, if those on the spectrum typically value rules as a way of navigating the world, it's unlikely Farmer would be unperturbed by the sexual advances his patient makes toward him. One often feels that autism is just another set-dressing quirk here, much like the silly decor (stacks of books used as an architectural feature, walls full of antique mirrors) in Farmer's office.

Romance-wise, Farmer is just the preordained loser of the film's contrived romantic triangle. Bess' real soulmate is, naturally (?), the only person other than her mother she can't see. Russell (Aidan Turner, of the Hobbit trilogy) is a rumpled hunk currently doing demolition work next door to Farmer's office. The pic presents him as suicidal, but again, his yearning for non-existence is just a useful romantic conceit, an adolescent way of indicating these two troubled souls were made for each other. Farmer takes Russell on as a patient and suggests Bess should start group therapy with him, talking to the stranger as if he were an invisible friend. After a while, she's able to hear the supportive things he says to her.

Occasionally, Whitebloom and Delaney seem to be influenced by an auteur who came to prominence around the time they started their careers: Hal Hartley, whose art house-beloved first films (set, like this one, just a commuter-train ride outside Manhattan) paired unlikely couples and didn't require conventionally realistic performances from their casts. If that's the case, they've missed the lessons those offbeat but thoughtful films had to teach. Here, affectation seems to be valued for its own sake, and love is something more talked about than understood.

Production company: LocomotiveDistributor: Uncork'd EntertainmentCast: Shannon Tarbet, Aidan Turner, Matthew Broderick, Chloe Sevigny, Benjamin WalkerDirectors: Monty Whitebloom, Andy DelaneyScreenwriter: Jennifer SchuurProducers: Alexis Alexanian, Lucy Barzun Donnelly, Alexandra PerryExecutive producers: Lottie Cooper, Peter Friedlander, Christopher GrayDirector of photography: Monty WhitebloomProduction designer: Javiera VarasCostume designer: Olivia MoriEditor: Alex KopitCasting directors: James Calleri, Erica Jensen

93 minutes

Go here to see the original:
'Love Is Blind' Review - Hollywood Reporter

The Kenya Society for the Blind has urged the government to set aside more funds towards the prevention of avoidable blindness in Kenya.

Out of the 10 million, blindness arises due to preventable and treatable conditions such as trachoma, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma, among others. There is also a rising increase of cases of blindness from lifestyle diseases such as diabetes.

The Kenya Society for the Blind Chairman Mr. Samson Waweru said that over 750,000 Kenyans are visually impaired with an additional 331,000 being totally blind.

Of the ten million people at risk, about 7.5 Million are infected. We as a Society and other players in the visual impairment space only have a capacity to reach out to 1,700,00 people per year. More services ranging from simple eye screening and treatment of common eye ailments are needed to reduce and prevent blindness. 80 percent of those cases at risk are preventable, meaning four out of five people who are blind right now in Kenya dont have to be. They are blind because the eye care services did not reach them in time while others simply cannot access medical care. Said Mr. Waweru.

According to the World Health Organization World Report on Vision, at least 2.2 billion people globally have a vision impairment or blindness, of whom at least 1 billion have a vision impairment that could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed.

Since its inception in 1956, The Society has supported more than two million Kenyans living with visual disabilities through the promotion of their welfare, education, training and employment while assisting in the prevention and alleviation of blindness.

See the rest here:
Government urged to set aside funds towards prevention of blindness in Kenya - HapaKenya

FLORIDA

One of thebiggest astronomy events of the yearwill take place Monday. Its an event so rare that it wont happen again until 2032.

People across North America, South America, Europe, Africa and western Asia will be able to see Mercury pass directly between the Earth and the sun in an astronomical alignment known as a transit.

Transits happen only a few times per century and provide a unique opportunity to see a planet glide across the face of the sun.

People will have a few hours to observe the event, which starts at 7:30 a.m. EST and lasts until 1:00 p.m. EST. That means for people in the western time zones, the transit will already be underway when the sun comes up.

Similar to a total solar eclipse, spectators will need a solar filter to shield their eyes from the harmful rays from the sun. Looking at the sun without a solar filter can lead to permanent eye damage and, in some cases, blindness.

However, onlookers will need more than just a solar filter to see the Mercury transit.

Because Mercury is so small from our perspective on Earth, youll need binoculars or a telescope with a Sun filter to see it,NASA said.

It is imperative to have a certified solar filter on the part of the telescope where light enters. Wearing solar filters, such as solar eclipse glasses, and looking into the eyepiece of a telescope that is not outfitted with a filter of its own can still lead to irreversible eye damage.

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) says that the filters should comply with theISO 12312-2 international safety standard. This number should appear with the filters original packaging or on the filter itself.

People will need not only the right equipment to see the Mercury transit but also cloud-free weather.

The best viewing conditions will be across the central and southwestern United States where clear skies will lead to an uninterrupted field of vision.

Meanwhile, disruptive clouds may obscure the sun across much of the Pacific Northwest, Deep South and East Coast.

People that cannot see the Mercury transit for themselves due to poor weather canwatch the event live.

Folks that miss Mondays event will have to wait more than a decade for the next opportunity to see a Mercury transit, with the next one taking place on Nov. 13, 2032.

There is an even longer wait for the next Venus transit, which is sometimes referred to as a twice in a lifetime event.

Venus transits come in pairs that are separated by an extended period of time. Most recently, there were a pair of Venus transits on June 8, 2004, and June 5, 2012, with the next pair not taking place until Dec. 10, 2117, and Dec. 8, 2125.

For more information on the Mercury Transit, visit the 2019 Mercury Transit website here.

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Rare Mercury transit happens Monday; When to watch and how to protect your eyes - Wink News

I never thought I had it in me to become one of those crazy dog people. And then, in the spring of my freshman year, a three pound, all-black, three-quarter-Shih-Tzu-one-quarter-Yorkie puppy named Annie became my third sister.

I watched through FaceTime the night my family brought her home. My parents laid with Annie on the basement floor, near the stairs that, 16 years earlier, their first dog Tiffany a Shih Tzu that accompanied them from their first apartment to the birth of all three of their children fell down in her cataract-induced blindness. She died after a one-way trip to the vet. Both my mother and I were allergic, two kids were away at college and the imprint of Tiffanys paws had not yet faded from our carpet. Nevertheless, we welcomed a new dog into the family. And as I like to say it was the best thing to happen to the Krebs household since I was born.

But why? Why does this little now-13-pound salt-and-pepper animal make us so happy? Maybe its because she triggers our parental instincts. Maybe its because shes adorable, and maybe its because shes just so adorable. There are so many reasons why dogs make us happy. But frankly, we focus on the wrong ones.

Were nearing finals, so its only a matter of time before packs of golden retrievers are paraded through Bass Library as a 15-minute stress panacea. Its only a matter of time before cringe-inducing print-outs, adorned with a pup, Impact font and an Uncle-Sam-esque you can do it message line the walls of computer rooms. Its only a matter of time before a pre-packaged doggie yoga secularized meditation program pops up in the Good Life Center sandbox and cures us of all our problems forever.

At Yale, dogs have been instrumentalized as an agent and symbol of the corporate wellness industrial complex. But wait, what is the corporate wellness industrial complex anyway? And what does it have to do with our perfect little pooches? Let me explain.

Corporate wellness thrives on a categorical division of happiness, the belief that we can divvy ourselves up into little boxes our careers, relationships, impact, physical health, mental health, happiness, etc. Its everywhere, and its defined by a fundamental contradiction: the simultaneous belief that these boxes never touch, that the bad of one can never contaminate the good of another. And yet, the good of one box can make up for the bad of another box.

Its the same division that allows us to pat our friends on the back with the other hand on the hilt of a dagger, to give contemporary imperialists lifetime achievement awards because theyre actually really nice in person, to meditate before our interviews with sweatshop management firms. It is the version of happiness that believes we should change neither the things that make us miserable on a societal level nor our undying commitments to those things, but rather how efficiently we go about fulfilling those commitments. It has the moral and intellectual consistency of canine excrement.

But, seriously, on the topic of canine excrement. I was in flip flops, gym shorts and my sisters winter jacket. It was freezing and beginning to rain, but Annie didnt seem to mind. I was taking her out so she could use the bathroom, and she was hell bent on doing anything but. She pranced around the yard, smelled the grass shed smelled a thousand times before, rolled on her favorite tennis ball and looked at me like I was an idiot when I started talking to her, begging her to please, just please do her business.

Then it hit me. I, Eric Krebs, Yale University student, opinion columnist, self-centered rising star extraordinaire in all my intelligence and glory, was at the total mercy of a dog. The little creature that lives in my house, eats entire bowls of taco meat off the kitchen table and doesnt even read my column.

And I couldnt have been happier.

See, dogs force us to place our centers of gravity beyond ourselves. They force us out of bed when they want to play, they force us out of the house when they want to walk, and they force us to reconsider what we consider important. Amidst the breathing exercises, the gratefulness exercises and the exercise exercises, corporate wellness holds the atomized individual to be the fundamental unit of existence. The question, then, is confined to what you do with this autonomy. Of course, when we are atomized, we are most efficient. Were ready to up and leave for a job offer, were ready to isolate ourselves in pursuit of perfection, were all self-contained trees who can choose exactly when and where our branches reach out and touch other trees.

But thats not how trees work. This is something that I think both the corporate wellness and anti-corporate wellness crowds get wrong. The corporate wellness camp likes to think that were autonomous actors that are fundamentally rational, the anti-corporate wellness camp likes to think that were autonomous actors that are fundamentally emotional. Neither are totally wrong, but neither are right. We like to tell ourselves we are so much more than Yale and its metrics for success. Yes, we are more than Yale but were also less than it, so much smaller than its buildings and books and trees. And thats okay. Trees need more than branches. Trees need the forest lest the soil erodes.

Happiness does not come from 15-minute puppy study breaks. Happiness is not derived from self-centered, autonomous scheduling. Happiness is the ability to vest our centers of gravity beyond ourselves, not in one thing but in many. To care for the little animals that live in our houses and make us smile even if we dont know why. To care for the people who make us laugh and make life worth living. To care for the world around us the world that belongs to us, the world that we belong to.

Even the strongest trees sometimes face a storm and lose a branch or two. So, dont worry when your branches fall and hit the ground, you beautiful, solid redwood. A dog just might come along and find the stick of a lifetime.

ERIC KREBS is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College. His column runs on alternate Mondays. Contact him at eric.krebs@yale.edu.

Read the original here:
KREBS: This is your dog on wellness - Yale Daily News

OLYMPIC boxing legend Nicola Adams has retired at the age of 37.

The Lioness hangs up her gloves with an undefeated record and as the current WBO flyweight world champion.

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Adams, who was born in Leeds, became the first openly LGBT athlete to win an Olympic boxing gold medal when she took top spot at London 2012.

And she repeated the feat at Rio 2016 - the same year she won the World Championships.

She penned an open letter to her local newspaper, the Yorkshire Evening Post, in which she revealed that continuing her in-ring career risked "irreparable damage and permanent vision loss".

Adams, whose last fight was in September, wrote: "I'm immensely honoured to have represented our country - to win double Olympic gold medals and then the WBO championship belt is a dream come true," she wrote.

"But it's not without taking its toll on my body, and aside from the expected aches and pains, I've been advised that any further impact to my eye would most likely lead to irreparable damage and permanent vision loss.

"It has been an honour to compete on the global stage, and it has been a privilege to fight against such remarkable athletes.

I'm immensely honoured... but boxing has taken its toll on my body

Whilst I am proud of my achievements, the unwavering belief from everyone in my corner is something I will appreciate for the rest of my life.

"To my wonderful team, I would not be the fighter I am today without your encouragement and understanding - what you have taught me goes beyond the ring.

Particularly special thanks go to the wonderful Alwyn Belcher, my coach and personal mentor of many years.

"Hanging up my gloves was always going to hard, but I have never felt luckier and I'm so immensely proud of how far the sport has come."

Adams won the vacant WBO belt against Isabel Milan in 2018, less than 18 months after he first professional bout, and bows out with an unbeaten professional record of five wins and one draw.

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She was also a nominee for the BBC Sports Personality award in 2012.

Adams, who once worked as an extra on Coronation Street and Eastenders, was awarded an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours.

She was described as a "trailblazer, history-maker and legend" by Team GB.

Read this article:
Olympic boxing legend Nicola Adams retires aged 37 over blindness fears as undefeated world flyweight champion - The Sun

Cataract is the principal cause of blindness for people above 50 years in India, according to the National Blindness and Visual Impairment Survey of India (2015-19), adding that barriers to accessing treatment include the following no one to accompany [the patient], seasonal preferences, and financial constraints.

Among men, the most important barriers are financial constraints (31%) and local reasons (21.5%).

Among women, local reasons (23.1%) and financial constraints (21.2%) were the most important barriers.

Cataract is the cause for 66.2% cases of blindness, 80.7% cases of severe visual impairment, and 70.2% cases of moderate visual impairment in the age group.

Also, blindness is more pronounced among illiterate (3.23%) than literates (0.43%) and more prevalent in the rural population (2.14%) than urban (1.80%).

What makes this worse for India is the fact that approximately 93% of cases of blindness and 96.2% visual impairment cases in this age group were avoidable.

Of all the avoidable causes, more than half were treatable, found the survey.

The survey was conducted by Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Opthalmic Sciences, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, for Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The survey was conducted in 31 districts of 24 States in the country.

Financial constraint was found to be the biggest barrier in accessing a cataract surgery with this being a reason for 22.1% blindness cases and lack of awareness was behind 18.4% cases, who did not feel any need of the surgery, the survey noted.

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Cataract major cause of blindness above 50 - The Hindu

The sun was shining with a chill in the air as beep baseball teams from all over Texas gathered Saturday at Moore MST Magnet School in Tyler for the 11th annual Great Texas Shoot Out, an event intended to raise awareness for breast cancer and blindness.

Beep baseball is a form of baseball for those who are blind or visually impaired. There are six fielders and two bases that are randomly triggered by an operator. When the batter hits the ball, they must run to the base that is beeping before a fielder picks up the ball. If they get to the base first, the batting team gets a run. Just like traditional baseball, each team gets three outs per inning, but each batter gets four strikes per at-bat in beep baseball.

The Tyler Tigers, in conjunction with the National Beep Baseball Association, hosted the tournament to raise funds for the Susan G. Komen foundation and help pay for their trip to the Beep Baseball World Series in Ames, Iowa, happening in July 2020.

Texas teams from Austin, Bryan-College Station, Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston came out to participate and support the cause in recognition of breast cancer and Blind Awareness Day.

During opening ceremonies, Tracy Sawyer was named the 2019 Breast Cancer Queen, John Ingram was crowned the 2019 Shoot Out King and Tatyana Contreras, 12, was deemed the 2019 KOOL (Kids of the League) Kid.

Members of the Tyler Lions Club also presented the Tyler Tigers with a $1,000 check donation.

Tyler Lions Club Member Rip Duncan threw out the ceremonial first pitch, Contreras hit the ceremonial first ball and the games began.

Once in the swing of things, players from every team showed support for one another during each play and fun was had by all.

Originally posted here:
Tyler Tigers raise awareness of breast cancer and blindness with beep baseball tournament - Tyler Morning Telegraph

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Michele McDonnall, Mississippi State University and Jennifer L. Cmar, Mississippi State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Communities across the world observe White Cane Day on Oct. 15 to recognize the contributions of people with blindness and low vision and to promote equal opportunities. The day was first observed in the U.S. in 1964, when Congress passed a law to increase awareness about the white canes role in promoting independent, safe travel for people with blindness or low vision.

More than 7.5 million Americans, or 2.4% of the population, are blind or have low vision. Some people are born with blindness or low vision, but most people acquire vision loss, often at older ages. Researchers estimate that the incidence of blindness and low vision will rise rapidly through 2050 as the population ages.

As researchers who study issues related to blindness and low vision, we are interested in how society, its institutions, businesses and individuals currently perceive members of this population and how these perceptions may influence opportunities, particularly in terms of employment.

How the world has changed

Since passage of that law 55 years ago, the world we live in has changed drastically. Advances in technology have significantly changed our everyday lives, and much progress in accessibility and inclusivity has occurred. Federal laws that protect people with disabilities from employment discrimination have been passed, and many companies have since adopted inclusive hiring practices.

Assistive technology such as screen readers and screen magnifiers improve access to information and jobs. Built-in accessibility features in mainstream technologies are increasingly common. Accessible transportation options are continually evolving, including ride-hailing services and autonomous vehicles.

These changes and innovations have increased opportunities and reduced some barriers for people who are blind or those who have low vision (for simplicity, we will use the term blind going forward).

Ongoing employment challenges

One thing that has not changed for many people who are blind is lack of access to the workforce. This is true for people with all types of disabilities, hence the celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month in October. Our team of researchers at the National Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision is addressing this issue for people who are blind.

The large disparities in employment rates that have historically existed for people who are blind still exist today. The most recent data from the American Community Survey indicates that 44.2% of people who are blind are employed and 10% are unemployed. This compares to an employment rate of 77.2% and unemployment rate of 4.8% for people without disabilities.

Why does employment continue to be a challenge for so many people who are blind? It may be that perceptions about the capabilities of the population have not changed.

Employer perceptions about blind people

One of the most common barriers to employment for people who are blind is negative employer attitudes. In several studies conducted between 2012 and 2017 with almost 1,000 employers, we measured employer attitudes and knowledge about how blind people can perform basic job functions. We included a measure of explicit (self-reported) attitudes toward individuals who are blind as employees and a measure of implicit attitudes about the competence of people who are blind. Implicit attitudes refer to subconscious beliefs or stereotypes that a person may hold but not be aware of and thus would be unable to report.

Our research with employers revealed the following:

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Employer knowledge is limited about how people who are blind can perform basic job tasks.

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Self-reported attitudes vary widely among employers, from extremely negative to completely positive, but on average they fall in the middle, or neutral, range of our attitude measure.

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Implicit attitudes also vary, but on average are strongly negative, indicating that employers tend to automatically associate competence with sighted people and incompetence with blind people.

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Knowing how blind people can perform job tasks is related to more positive self-reported and implicit attitudes.

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More positive self-reported employer attitudes are associated with a greater likelihood of hiring someone who is blind.

Our results verify the importance of employer attitudes toward blind people because of the association between attitudes and hiring. We know that knowledge is associated with more positive employer attitudes, but that knowledge is lacking among employers, and presumably among society in general. One potential avenue to improve employer attitudes is through increasing knowledge about how people who are blind function on the job. Most employers likely assume that a blind person cannot perform many essential job functions when in reality this is incorrect.

People who are blind can perform most jobs that sighted people can. There are not jobs for blind people, rather, most occupations in the economy are available to this population, given appropriate accommodations. You might be surprised to learn that people who are blind work in a variety of jobs.

They are architects, artists, auto mechanics, fashion designers, engineers, scientists, physicians and judges. Many jobs previously unavailable to people who are blind are now accessible thanks to advances in technology.

What people can do to open up opportunities

Many employers have inaccessible job application sites, and people who are blind have filed lawsuits regarding their inability to use a screen reader to access job-related information on websites. Giving this group of people equal access to learn about and apply for any job of interest is an important first step. Employers should make all digital information related to jobs accessible, including the application process. Accessibility is not difficult, and much support is available for this effort.

In addition, employers and society in general should learn about how people who are blind can perform tasks for which sighted people rely on their vision. This is one of the best ways to change perceptions. Attending your local White Cane Day event is a great opportunity to learn about this population. Events such as this and National Disability Employment Awareness Month are important to increase awareness about the capabilities of people who are blind and the employment challenges they continue to face.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/blind-people-have-increased-opportunities-but-employers-perceptions-are-still-a-barrier-124977.

Originally posted here:
Blind people have increased opportunities, but employers perceptions are still a barrier - The Edwardsville Intelligencer

New Delhi: The estimated prevalence of blindness in India has reduced by approximately 47% in last 12 years, while untreated cataract continue to be leading cause of blindness, a government survey has revealed.

According to the National Blindness and Visually Impaired Survey (2019) released by Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday, the estimated blindness has came down to 0.36% from 1% in 2006-2007since the last survey. According to the survey report,the visual impairment has come down by 51.9% to 2.55% as a compared to 2010.

As per the survey report, the maximum prevalence of blindness was seen in age group of above 80 (11.6%), followed by 70-79 age group (4.1%), 60-69 age group (1.6%) and 50-59 age group (0.5%). The survey noted that the most of the blindness (92.9%) and visual impairment (96.2%)cases were due to avoidable causes.

The current survey was conducted between 2015 and 2018 by Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi in association with ministry of health and family welfare. The survey covered over 93,000 people aged equal and above 50 years using Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness (RAAB) method in 31 districts of 24 states and Union Territories.

People suffering from blindness have reduced from 12 million in 2006-07 to 4.8 million in 2019. This indicates that the country is close to achieving the World Health Organizations (WHO) goal of reducing it to 0.3% of the total population by 2020," said Harsh Vardhan.

This is 47% decline and the findings of the current survey are for blindness as defined to be vision of less than 3/60 in the better eye.The WHO had set the goal of lowering the prevalence of visual impairment by 25% by 2019 as compared to 2010 levels," he said.

India changed its over four-decade-old definition of blindness in 2017, bringing it in line with the WHO criteria. According to the new definition, a person who is unable to count fingers from a distance of three metres would be considered "blind" as against the earlier stipulation of six metres, which was adopted in 1976.

The survey also revealed that in 66.2% cases the cause of blindness was untreated cataract. The survey found a higher prevalence of blindness in illiterates i.e. 3.23% in comparison to 0.43% among 10 pass and above. Further the report noting a rural urban divide, said that blindness was more prevalent in rural population i.e. 2.14% as compared to 1.80% in rural population.

Blindness was found to be lowest in Thrissur district in Kerala and in Thoubal district in Manipur whereas Bijnor distirct in Uttar Pradesh witnessed the highest prevalence. The house-to-house survey was designed to generate representative data for the sampled districts as well as for India. An additional survey was conducted between 0-49 years age group in Jan-Feb 2019 and covered 18,000 people in six districts across various regions of India," Promila Gupta, Principal Consultant, National Programme for Control of Blindness, Ministry of Health said.

"The results of both surveys, in 0-49 age group and in equal and above 50 years population, were used to estimate the prevalence of blindness and visual impairment in India across all age group," she said.

Link:
Estimates of blindness reduced by 47% in 12 years: Govt survey - Livemint

Sleep apnea linked to blindness in diabetic patients

New York, Oct 15 (IANS) Severe sleep apnea is a risk factor for developing diabetic macular edema, a complication of diabetes that can cause vision loss or blindness, a study said.

For the study, the research team looked at the data from all patients diagnosed over an 8-year period at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan.

"Based on the results, we hope that more medical professionals will approach sleep apnea as a risk factor for diabetic macular edema," said study researcher Juifan Chiang from Taiwan.

This condition is called ''Diabetic Retinopathy'' and is a leading cause of blindness in the US.

Diabetic macular edema is more difficult to treat in patients with severe sleep apnea, the researchers said.

When diabetics have poor control over the blood sugar levels, tiny blood vessels at the back of the eye can become damaged.

Sometimes, tiny bulges protrude from the blood vessels, leaking fluid and blood into the retina. This fluid can cause swelling or edema in an area of the retina that allows us to see clearly.

According to the researchers, sleep apnea may contribute to the development and worsening of Diabetic Retinopathy by increasing insulin resistance, elevating inflammation and raising blood pressure, all of which can damage the blood vessels at the back of the eye.

They found the rate of severe sleep apnea was significantly higher in patients with diabetic macular edema compared with those without diabetic macular edema (80.6 per cent vs. 45.5 per cent).

They also found that the worse their sleep apnea was, the worse their macular edema.

Severe sleep apnea was also more prevalent in patients who needed more treatment to control their macular edema.

The study was presented at the 123rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in the US.

--IANS

bu/ar/kr

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: IANS

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Sleep apnea linked to blindness in diabetic patients - Outlook India