Word: retina
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...resources and navigate some fishy waters. In the '80s color clinched its victory. The gravity of black-and-white, the hard and durable tones of an anvil, gave way decisively. But color is tricky. Blood shouts, and the smallest patch of yellow adobe pounds hard on the retina. So a generation of photographers have learned to draw that very clamor into a deliberate statement. The hot pinks and fluorescent lime in Alex Webb's pictures of Haiti don't just sizzle inside the frame. They deliver the terms of a paradox: Barbaric rule can operate in the broadest daylight...
...world of biometric security. It is a world in which traditional keys and combination locks could eventually become obsolete. Increasingly, access to buildings, rooms and vaults will be controlled by computerized machines that can recognize personal characteristics of people seeking entrance: fingerprints, blood-vessel arrangements in the eye's retina, voice patterns, even typing rhythms. These biometric machines have special sensors that pick up the characteristics, convert them into digital code and compare them with data stored in the computer's memory bank. Unless the information matches up with the characteristics of authorized persons, entrance is denied...
Perhaps the most sophisticated aid to the handicapped is an eye-tracking system built by Thomas Hutchinson, a University of Virginia engineer. Using a technology developed for jet-fighter pilots, Hutchinson's device measures the reflection of light from the retina to determine where on a computer display the eye is gazing. A person equipped with the eye tracker simply looks at a command on the screen and the computer executes it. "The last thing to go in the body is the eye muscle," says Hutchinson. "With this system we have an opportunity to free minds that are trapped inside...
...sensory disability. Wharton is partially deaf and wears a hearing aid when on dry land. Darnyi has had only partial sight in his left eye since 1983. "We were fooling around in the snow when a snowball hit me in the eye," explains the swimmer. "It caused a detached retina." Despite four eye operations, and against the advice of his doctors, Darnyi , returned to competition in 1984. Between his typical eleven-mile-a-day training sessions, Darnyi, a science-fiction fan, builds model spaceships and muses on his future. The big question: Should he accept one of the many offers...
...lens of the eye becomes cloudy or opaque. About 15% of people over 65 suffer reduced vision from cataracts; many eventually undergo surgery to have the lens replaced. Some ophthalmologists also believe that decades of absorbing ultraviolet-A may lead to destruction of cells in the center of the retina. The condition, known as macular degeneration, is a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Unlike cataracts, it is not correctable. While acknowledging that the evidence linking sunlight to cataracts and retinal damage is not conclusive, many doctors now recommend that adults, and children too, use sunglasses that absorb nearly...