Slashdot Mirror
Chemists Discover How Blue Light Speeds Blindness
Isao writes: It (apparently) has been known that blue light damages eyes and accelerates macular degeneration. A new article on Phys.org may have identified how this happens. It seems that unlike other light colors, blue causes a necessary molecule (retinal) to permanently kill photoreceptor cells. "The researcher found that a molecule called alpha Tocopherol, a Vitamin E derivative and a natural antioxidant in the eye and body, stops the cells from dying," reports Phys.org. "However, as a person ages or the immune system is suppressed, people lose the ability to fight against the attack by retinal and blue light." The authors will continue their research and recommend filtering and blue-light reduction in the meantime. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Blue light in this context is just that - regular blue pixels on a computer screen. There are night-safe modes which tone down these pixels.
Your retinas has around seven layers of rods, cones and processing neurons. Light is refracted through the lens so that infra-red light hits blood vessels, red light which has a longer wavelength and travels less deeper into the retina hits the upper layers. Blue light in this context is goes into the deepest layer of the retina because the wavelength is shorter and has more energy. UV light gets filtered out by the lens (but causes cataracts in the long term).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
No, as at the time of the introduction of the blue LED, efficiency and output was horrible, and even an incandescent light of equal power consumption output more light below the 470nm range than the LED did.
Around the early 2000s is when blue LEDs began to gain in efficiency to the point where they were commercially viable for use in just about any consumer product.
I'd suggest starting to look around 1997-2004 for the beginning of an increasing trend.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Some people lose the ability to make that alpha Tocopherol as they age, leading to blindness."
Did you just quit reading AND thinking there? Next bit clearly states that people with compromised immune systems or weakened ones from disease are also susceptible. Guess what a hospital is loaded with? Hint: Look all around one, and then look up.
We also know (I've been fucking saying this for almost a decade, now, when I was doing global horticultural lighting design) that grow lighting is triggering macular degeneration in younger healthier population. This doesn't mean your mom and pop in their 50s+, this is happening as early as a persons 20s.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
P.S. - Does anyone know how I can hook up a Hercules ISA card to PCIe?
No need, you can hook it up to USB. It would be easier, though, to get a display card with a VGA output and fix the cable to omit the blue line. You'd still get colors, just not as many, and none of them would be at all blue.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nice to see that someone is still messing with resistors that have bands. You must like the old cruft like I do. My issue is the focus now. Many many years ago I was able to solder a 40 pin flat pack without glasses. Now I'm lucky to find the damn iron without technological assistance.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
DMSO Tocopherol eyedrops a couple times a week? I suppose someone'll have to do a study on exactly how safe DMSO would be for eyeballs over long periods of time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The amber glasses used by shooters work by blocking blue light. The lens in your eye is a simple lens, so suffers from chromatic aberration. It does not focus the different colors of light onto the exact same spot. So what you see can be sharpened by blocking one end of the visible spectrum - red or blue. Your eyes are most sensitive to detail in green, less so in red, and suck at resolving blue. So blue light can be filtered out with very little effect on visual acuity (other than color accuracy). With less chromatic aberration, what you see appears slightly sharper.