#eyes

#eyes

Inspired by McDonald's Efficient Fast Food Operation, This Indian Hospital's Cataract "McSurgery" Restored Eyesight to Millions of PeopleA network of hospitals of the Aravind Eye Care System carries out around 500,000 surgeries a year while providing free services to those in need. The efficient network of Aravind got its inspiration from the highly effective assembly line model of McDonald’s.Govindappa Venkataswamy, the doctor who set up Aravind, said after learning the economies of scale of fast-food chains, “If McDonald's can do it for hamburgers, why can't we do it for eye care?"More than a quarter of the world’s population suffers from vision impairment, and about a half of it is preventable but untreated according to the World Health Organization. In India, around 10 million people are blind and about 50 million are suffering from visual impairments, with cataracts being the predominant cause.The model used by Aravind proved to be a success with its wide reach in India. An example of a recipient of the hospital’s free services is Venkatachalam Rajangam. "I thought the operation would be for an hour but within 15 minutes everything was over. But it didn't feel rushed. The procedure was done properly," he said after the “Mcsurgery”.Images: Arun Sankar/AFP#eyes #surgery #McSurgery #India #cataract #McDonalds

This German Student Can Change His Eye’s Pupil Size On Command This ability is both a neat party trick and a scientific breakthrough. A student in Germany can resize his pupils at will!Initially thought to be impossible, the enlargement or dilation of pupils was thought to be completely automatic and in response to certain environmental conditions. However, according to a new case report, a 23-year-old man just blew up the status quo. What’s different about this new case report is that the man can change his pupil size by directly controlling it as a muscle. Christoph Strautch, the senior author of the report, was approached by the man, who was a student of psychology at Ulm University in Germany. The man, identified in the case report as D.W., told researchers that "Constricting the pupil feels like gripping, tensing something; making it larger feels like fully releasing, relaxing the eye." D.W. was able to learn how to change his pupil size without focusing on objects after a long time of practice. All he has to do now is to concentrate on the eye instead of imagining a bright or dark environment. Image credit: Eberhardt et al., IJP, 2021, #Eyes #PupilResizing #Science 