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Citizen Scientists Develop Eye Drops That Provide Night Vision
rtoz writes: A group of scientists in California have successfully created eye drops that temporarily enable night vision. They use mixture of insulin and a chemical known as Chlorin e6 (Ce6) to enable the user to view objects clearly in darkness up to 50 meters away. Ce6 is found in some deep-sea fish and often used to treat night blindness. The solution starts to work within an hour of being applied to the user's eyes, and lasts for several hours afterward. The test subject's eyesight returned to normal the next day. The organization Science for the Masses has released a paper detailing the experiment on their website.
Maybe not so smart. Sounds kinda blurry, like a Gen I night vision scope. I think I'd wait a little bit to make sure he doesn't grow things in inappropriate places or start photosynthesizing. But they do have the benefit of previous research as some form of chemotherapy so I guess it won't kill you right off.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What if you use it during the day? Do you go blind permanently?
Sounds like they've invented eyedrops that dilate your pupils! Eyedoctors will be amazed! Oh, wait...
Some nutter uses a syringe (!) to inject your eyeballs with fish guts in his garage.
Awesome if it's got practical uses though.
I'd hate to be in the military when this and others come down the pike.
Pay attention all you obsolete hardware engineers and soon-to-be obsolete software engineers!!
"Citizen Scientists"...that's an odd word choice. Tacit admission that "professional scientists" only do agenda-based research??? Food for thought.
Some nutter uses a syringe (!) to inject your eyeballs with fish guts in his garage.
Firstly, it's a glorified eye-dropper not a syringe.
Secondly, it's an important biomedical advancement made by citizen scientists. (The important part of that sentence is "by citizen scientists".)
Thirdly, there's an organization which is a nexus for citizen science.
The important bit of this announcement, and the one that makes it interesting to me, is that people are making biomedical experiments on their own, bypassing regulatory agencies and big industry alike.
This is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a stagnant market dominated by large monolithic entities. It's usually a small upstart company that's more agile than the big conglomerate, but it works the same in research as it does everywhere else.
For a games-theory argument, consider that the regulatory agencies are free to require any safety requirements at no cost to themselves, but if something goes wrong they are held responsible. As a result we have a system where it costs 2.5 billion dollars to bring a drug to market, so that it's economically infeasable to implement existing cures for rare diseases. It's also impossible for individuals to manage their own risk with informed consent.
For a games-theory argument, consider that health insurance companies see care and maintenance as a cost to be minimized and rates as profit to be maximized. As a result, insurance companies are unwilling to pay for newly minted procedures and therapies because "it's experimental".
(As a concrete example, it tool a loooong time for the insurance companies to consider MRI scans non-experimental.)
So it's not really *surprising* that people are taking things into their own hands and doing their own research, but it's an important development.
Oh, and cue up the kneejerk response from established players about risk, gold-standard regulatory bureaucratic fandom, and how no one without a PhD can possibly do real research.
Gotta kill a few people. Then you got to get sent to a slam, where they tell you you'll never see daylight again. You dig up a doctor, and you pay him 20 menthol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs.
Or here, use these eye drops.
These "citizen scientists" will be promptly replaced by H1B visa holders.
Government policy cannot be violated.
Has (a little) more info about the night vision, and more info about the people who do this.
They also want to enhance vision in the IR range: http://scienceforthemasses.org/infrared-project/ (and a rebuttal against it: http://petapixel.com/2014/08/25/retinal-neuroscientists-rebuttal-humans-cant-see-infrared-matter-eat/)
As for cost: They used 200mg of Ce6. This amount would cost $75-$150 depending on source.
Fools. Makes sense to publish now.
view objects clearly in darkness up to 50 meters away.
Define "darkness." It obviously wasn't completely dark. Was it dark like a moonless night dark, or dark like an interior hallway dark?
Secondly, how do you define night vision in metres?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I will take a night vision scope over this, any day.
April 1st this year 3 days early?
Now if this team designs night vision drops that also turn the sclera blue, they have IMO a real winner . . .
Hmm... What could go wrong, fucking with one's eyes?
If there's one body part you don't mess with, I would suggest this is it.
Did no one learn from Ray Milland in _The Man with the X-Ray Eyes_?
oblig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If they can make it possible to see in total darkness, what concoction do I need to drip into my eyes to see through girlies' clothes? :)
Actually, this stuff supposedly lets you see-through-darkness, but I think someone's already developed see-through bras and panties! I looked it up. Tomorrow, I'm going to Victoria's Secret and getting see-through-bras and panties, and dripping them into my eyes. Then I will be able to see girls NEKKID!
Because that's how it works, right?
You've invented belladonna! Cheerio!
May include one or more of the following:
-- sleeping 20 hours or more daily
-- hydrophobia
-- sudden violent disposition to pieces of string
-- self-licking of genitals
-- tuna addiction
-- sudden urges to defecate in your neighbors kid's sandox
-- sexual activity lasting 60 seconds or less
-- trying to gain the affections of friends and loved ones by bringing them dead rodents
I thought it was half of your future lifespan. At least, that was the price offered to some attractive teenagers. Maybe ugly old folks don't qualify.
It is a failure of the american market. When you have a fully socialized medicine without insurance as middle man, the insensitive then switch and taking up of new method which are better or cheaper is far quicker.
The paper provides /very/ little quantitative detail with which to assess efficacy. This is not science.
One thing that marks the onset of presbyopia is that your vision increasingly sucks as low/dim light conditions. If this stuff is without side effects, then this would make a neat (at least temporary) cure for early presbyopia, not requiring bright(est) lights for reading, soldering, etc.
Next, they will have to develop a set of night sunglasses for any one who had the drops!
A better idea would be to develop a pair of light sunglasses or contacts to adjust to the light instantaneously. Even better would be to develop glasses or contacts so that they show a consistent light to the user. For example, if one is in the middle of a football field and somebody turns on the lights the person wearing the glasses still sees the same - let the glasses do the adjusting the conditions of light.
... As a "citizen scientist", just as there is no such thing as a "citizen journalist". There are only meddlesome idiots and... Terrorists. The sooner the authorities get hold of those crazies and shut them up the better.
That's bunk. By the time it's fully dark (it doesn't go from full daylight to night in an instant) the eyes will have adapted anyway.
It might protect you from temporarily losing the adaptation due to light exposure, i.e. a glimpse of a lantern or a gun flash but that's not the same thing at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Had to have seen that coming.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png