Do you have cataract? It is a disease of old age. Most times, cataract affects an individual due to exposure to radiation, chemicals and other environmental factors that reduce the ability of the eyes to function properly. Cataract, as a disease, is due to the lens that captures light in the eyes becoming opaque, thereby preventing light from passing through to the photoreceptor cells at the retina.
I wrote an article this week on the dress that caused a sensation on social media circles because of the difficulty it imposes on a viewer as to light perception. Persons who suffer visual problems like cataract do not enjoy and revel in the sensation of light and color as others. French impressionist, Claude Monet, is in that class. Her visual problems made her paintings imprecise and muted in colors. If you suffer from visual problems, you have to cope with inefficient light reception.
Is it white and gold, or blue and black?Credit: User swiked on www.tumblr.com
Apart from the cones and the rods in the retina which distinguishes daylight from night vision, there is another group of cells in front of the retina which work towards our enjoying color.
Those cells are called Müller cells or müller glia. These cells function as light and color filters. Their position in front of the retina makes sure that the light getting to the rods and cones are already sorted, filtered and organized. Clever, not so?
Müller cells, according to Dr Erez Ribak from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, are at just the “the right height, and their light-bearing trunks are just the right width, to filter the wavelengths correctly”.
So, as you look at the dress again, and if you wonder why so many persons disagree on what color they perceive, you could place the müller cells as one of the candidates at the heart of their visual problems, if not a disease like cataract.
In the nineteenth century, there were many prodigious inventors. One of them believed in inventing weapons of warfare and wanted them for pacifist uses. He was Alfred Nobel (21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896), nicknamed “the merchant of death” in an obituary published in error. I wonder if he would turn in his grave if he were to witness the power packed in directed-energy weapons, or weapons of warfare that use light and electromagnetic radiation to produce their powerful devastating impact. Some call them laser weapons.
It is no longer news that laser weapons are now commonplace in military research. What makes news is when they are made deadlier, more portable, more efficient and more affordable.
Introducing ATHENA (Advanced Test High Energy Asset), a directed energy prototype, developed by Lockheed Martin; a 30 kilowatt single-mode fiber weapon system. From a distance of a mile (1.6km) it reduced the engine of a car to flames.
Imagine the power packed behind the ATHENA fiber optic laser system!Photo credit: www.ibtimes.com
A mile is just a distance for the prototype. ATHENA can go farther and its uses can go furthest, even beyond the military.
The potentialities for such portable weapons is beyond the imagination. Sci-fi and Dr. Who will be shows of the past. Welcome to the real world. The same way guns replaced knives and arrows, these weapons could be the weapons of the streets of the future.
It’s sad. 365 days after the disappearance of Malaysia airlines flight MH370, the report that was recently published offered no satisfactory answers. The locator beacon without a battery was a false hope indeed.
The emotion was touching. The sadness could be felt even when the victims were not related to you.
One of the posters, “Dad I miss you,” stirred a nerve in me.
In Nigeria, the Chibok girls abducted on April 14, 2014 have not yet been found. The President, Goodluck Jonathan, made a promise recently that the girls were safe. At the approach of another anniversary for dearly beloved missing persons, we could be faced with another false hope? Maybe, maybe not! I’d place my cards on the maybe.
If I was taking a trek to the mountains, going scuba diving, or visiting Northern Nigeria, I’d be wise to take along a personal locator beacon. Did you know locator beacons could also be fitted to one’s person?
I searched on Google and found some myself. Like this site that offers personal locator beacons for rent.
I was wondering: maybe the demand for locator beacons should be on the rise!
A friend once told me: “I’d rather an enemy I know than a friend whom I don’t trust.” Not the actual words but something along those principles.
Losing my teaching job a week ago, I thought up this cartoon on the way from an interview.
Photo credit: S.J. de Waard via Wikimedia CommonsSpeech bubbles created using Phrase It.
I still haven’t gone over the lose because I thought I was doing my best and didn’t deserve it.
Maybe I shouldn’t; I shouldn’t have been working the extra mile.
Maybe!
