#eye sight

[reality-detective]

The color nuances we see depend on the number and distribution of cones in our eye. You can check the image of the rainbow photo above. How many colors do you count? A computer only shows a limited number of shades so this test is limited to "normal" ranges of human perception.

You see less than 20 color nuances: you are a dichromats, which means you have 2 types of cones only. You are likely to wear black, beige, and blue. 25% of the population is dichromat.

You see between 20 and 32 color nuances: you are a trichromat, you have 3 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green and red area). You enjoy different colors as you can appreciate them. 50% of the population is trichromat.

You see between 33 and 39 colors: you are a tetrachromat, like bees, and have 4 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green, red plus yellow area). 25% of the population is tetrachromat. 🤔

[calabria-mediterranea]

The feast of Santa Lucia, in Italy, is a journey through popular traditions, from Sicily to Calabria

Santa Lucia (Saint Lucy) is celebrated in Italy on 13 December.

Santa Lucia was, according to the hagiographies which are our only sources, a young girl from Syracuse in Sicily. Born in 283, she died during the persecutions of the Christians under Emperor Diocletian in 304, on December 13th.

The Life of Saint Lucy

As a young woman Lucy was promised in marriage to a pagan. Christians, like Lucy, were at this time still very much a minority in Syracuse.

However, on a pilgrimage to visit the tomb of St Agatha, Lucy had a vision of the saint which was to change the direction of her life. Agatha spoke to Lucy telling her she would cure her mother’s illness (internal bleeding), which she did. After this experience Lucy knew she must dedicate her life to Christ. She made a vow to remain a virgin to better serve her purpose.

On her return to Syracuse, Lucy told her mother of her decision to dedicate her life to Christ, as well as to give all her worldly possessions to the needy. Her mother was at first, (perhaps naturally) sceptical. But eventually it seems she was won over by Lucy’s faith and determination. Over the following years Lucy’s fame in dedicating her life to the poor spread throughout Syracuse and further afield. The young man who wished to marry her, seeing Lucy give all her money and possessions to the poor, and having been refused, decided to denounce her to the town prefect as a Christian. For some time the Roman Empire had felt threatened by this growing Christian “cult” and wanted a display of Rome’s continuing might and power. Lucy was a well-known figure in the community. If she could be forced to renounce her faith other Catholics might follow her. This was the thinking of those who brought her to trial.

So, Lucy was brought to court, where she was accused of being dissolute and possibly of unsound mind too (this was still largely a pagan society where a person’s wealth and possessions were how they gained status in life). It was to be a public trial, so that the humiliation of Lucy could discredit her religion and serve as a warning to other Christians.

At one point the judge Paschasius mocked Lucy for her virginity and said that she would be taken to a brothel, and here she would “lose her chastity” and then “the Holy Ghost shall depart from thee”. Lucy replied that her strength in God meant that 10,000 men would not be able to move her. When the judge put Lucy’s boast to the test this was found to be true – the men could not move her. The judge subsequently ordered for Lucy to be burned and a great fire was built. Lucy again stayed calm and asked for protection from the Lord, calling herself “a temple of God”. The fire was lit, but the flames did not touch her. Lucy told that crowd that persecution of Christians would not last much longer. Hearing her speak so eloquently the prefect was at his wit’s end and called out for anyone that could kill Lucy. Finally someone (probably a soldier) drew a sword and cut Lucy’s throat, which finally killed her.

Her first resting place was in the catacombs under Syracuse which now bears her name. This became the initial centre of her cult, which quickly flourished.

Patron of light and eye sight

Absent in the early narratives and traditions, at least until the fifteenth century, is the story of Lucia tortured by eye-gouging. According to later accounts, before she died, she foretold the punishment of Paschasius and the speedy end of the persecution, adding that Diocletian would reign no more and Maximian would meet his end. This so angered Paschasius that he ordered the guards to remove her eyes. Another version has Lucy taking her own eyes out in order to discourage a persistent suitor who admired them. When her body was prepared for burial in the family mausoleum it was discovered that her eyes had been miraculously restored. This is one of the reasons that Lucy is the patron saint of those with eye illnesses.

The idea probably came from her name Lucy, which derives from lux which is the Latin for light.

She became the patron saint of light and of eye sight. In artistic representations her attributes are two eyes on a plate in her hand.

Her feast day is the day of her martyrdom, December 13th, which in the Julian calendar is the winter solstice, and hence the shortest day of the year. It is therefore a celebration of the return of light.

The procession and rites in honour of Santa Lucia in Sicily and Calabria

Santa Lucia was born in Syracuse, a city in Sicily where the veneration of the martyr and patron saint is at the centre of fervent popular devotion. The celebrations reach their peak on 13 December, the date of her martyrdom, which occurred in 304 A.D. following Diocletian's Christian persecutions.

On this day, a solemn procession accompanies the Statue and Relics of the Saint from the Cathedral to the Church of Lucia al Sepolcro (Lucia at the Sepulchre), a route that is completed in reverse on 20 December. The Statue is a precious silver Simulacrum, dating back to 1599: the Saint wears a palm and a lily, symbol of purity, on her left hand, on her chest the reliquary with the Relics, on her throat a gem-studded dagger and in her right hand a plate with eyes.

The Statue is carried on people's shoulders along the streets of the historic centre, ancient Ortigia, and many devotees walk barefoot, amid flowers and burning candles.

December 13th marks a particularly heartfelt moment in Calabria, where devotion to the "Saint of Light" is intertwined with centuries-old traditions that combine Christian faith, folklore and ancient rites.

In Lamezia Terme (Calabria), the church of Santa Lucia stands in the upper and old part of Nicastro and for this reason the entire neighborhood takes the name of the saint.

Rectangular in shape, the church is modest in size with a very simple facade. The interior has a single nave and inside there are: a wooden statue of Saint Lucia, perhaps from 1700, which surmounts the marble high altar, the work of the sculptor Pergola (1970); a conciliar altar with bas-reliefs on wood and a sculpted ambo (1980), and in two special niches the statues of the Madonna and the Redeemer.

On the night of December 13th, Calabria comes alive with spectacular bonfires, a symbol of light and purification, which illuminate the squares and alleys of numerous towns.

The "Fireworks of Saint Lucia", in Crotone, are one of the most fascinating and evocative traditions of this day. Their origin dates back to ancient times, when they were lit to chase away the darkness of winter, recalling at the same time the image of the Saint and the solstitial rites.

Follow us on Instagram, @calabria_mediterranea

[bpod-bpod]

A-Eye

When light floods into our eyes, it’s the dome-like retina at the back, studded with light-sensitive photoreceptors, that collects the information. Our retinas need a healthy blood supply, and this is disturbed in conditions like macular degeneration. Here generative artificial intelligence helps to design one of hundreds of realistic but virtual retinas – networks of tiny artificial arteries (red) and veins (blue) used to train algorithms to segment (spot patterns) in the web of vessels. Later in the video, researchers use the synthetic retina to simulate the behaviour of fluorescein, a chemical commonly used to highlight issues with circulation around the retina. The fully trained AI eye can now spot patterns and problems in pictures of real retinas and may soon be put to work is hospitals and universities. Such methods could speed up early detection and diagnosis of retinal issues and therefore treatment for patients.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Emmeline E. Brown and colleagues

Centre for Computational Medicine, University College London, London, UK

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, August 2024

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[princesslovinharmony]

Tomorrow holds a world unknown, With hopes as high as mountains tall, A chance to see the beauty shown, Or face a darkness that could fall. The fear, it grips my heart so tight, Of what could be or might not be, To wake and find a world in light, Or lose the sight that sets me free. Yet courage calls me to this day, To take the chance, to dare, to dream, For in the risk, there lies the way, To find the beauty in life's gleam. If I should wake to colors bright, The world unveiled, a vivid scene, I'll cherish every ray of light, And every shade and in-between. But if the darkness is my fate, I'll hold the memories close, secure, Of all the beauty known to date, And find new ways to feel, for sure. For life is more than what we see, It's felt in every touch and sound, In every breath, in every plea, In love and hope that knows no bound. So is it worth this leap I take? To risk the sight for dreams so grand? Yes, for in this choice, I stake, The faith to reach and understand.

[marvelmaniac715]

Here’s a fun fact about me - I am long sighted in one eye and short sighted in the other. I have two different prescriptions in my glasses, and when I’m not wearing them I can hardly see, everything’s all blurry. So yeah, that’s fun.

[rose-reaper]

So on my quest to find knowledge for the year as apart of my resolution, I've come across a comment on a Mogul Mail video that mentioned that the sun was good for the eyes. I was curious so I've taken to do a little digging, found some interesting articles and a New York Times article that I can't read about it (Fuck you New York Times, I shouldn't have to pay to get genuinely good information to know). A lot of the articles say a lot of similar things and one article in particular said that half the world's population would be near sighted by 2050. Yeah. That's as of January 4th of 2024 about 25 years from now. This with the combination of genetics and future generations not going outside as much thanks to our electronic devices. I'm gonna do some more digging about this information, however I suggest ya'll look this up yourselves and you can tell the ipad kids to GO THE FUCK OUTSIDE! THEY DON'T NEED SKIBIDI TOILET! Their sense of sight is important.

[elysiumxflowers]

Guess who got new glasses finally! Is this really how everyone sees?! It’s all…dimensional! 3D! I feel robbed and cheated to have watched all my favorite shows with such 2D vision 🥲 guess I’ll just have to watch them all over again!

[hellborg]

It’s frankly absurd that eye and dental insurance are luxuries that not every job covers.

Your eyes, you know, your ability to see. Especially for people with glasses, we can’t choose to not wear glasses? So what then? We just go blind. Keep an old prescription and just let our vision deteriorate?

Dental health, despite what so many think, is so so so imperative to your overall health. Dental emergencies can lead to detrimental side effects and in extreme cases death.

Health insurance should be free and universal period. But as someone unemployed and in desperate need of eye and dental insurance it’s even more frustrating. even IF a miracle happens and I get a job, the likelihood of it providing eye and dental is incredibly low.

[kayina-san]

I be alive and i would hunt but i wouldnt be able to see what i was hunting

*this is just about having medical needs that would have meant death without modern medicine, so no ‘I’d probably die from not being able to distinguish the blur as a lion’ we have a healthy caveman squad who cares for each other, we just also dont have, yknow, penicilin. etcetera.

pls reblog for sample size etc

follow for more occasional useless polls :)

[areyouafraidofdating]

[return-of-the-living-gnarsh]

Currently I'm blind in my left eye and now my right is acting up. Everything on my phone is in dark mode and text is as large as I can get it so I can see better. I'm really stressed out and freaking out because insurance sucks and the eye doctor is taking their sweet time.

[doug-lewars]

Vision

If you're reading this, you're looking at either a phone, tablet or computer screen. In short, you're looking at something close to your face. To compensate, look at something in the distance as often as possible, preferably outside. Your eyes will thank you.