February 8, 2016
News & Features
100 Eyes, One Insect The night may have a thousand eyes, as countless lounge singers have crooned, but a parasitic insect that lives in wasps is no slouch in the optics department either. It has 100.
The fly has the fastest visual system in the animal kingdom -- so fast that a fly in a movie theater would see a slide show, not the blur that people interpret as motion. But how does that fast-moving visual information lead to the twitch that zips the fly to safety before a fly swatter can crash...
AGING Americans expect more from their eyes these days than ever before. People in their 70's and 80's want to be able to drive, play cards, recognize people on the street, travel with their grandchildren, take advantage of senior discounts in the movies and read the books they missed while working...
DO door frames, telephone poles and the edges of buildings appear bent or crooked, as if you were looking at them through heat waves on a highway? Do objects at a distance seem clear but those up close are blurry, or vice versa?
CLOSE your eyes and consider these questions: What shape are a German shepherd's ears? Which is darker green: a frozen pea or a Christmas tree? If you rotate the letter "N" 90 degrees to the right, is a new letter formed? In seeking answers to such questions, scientists say, most people will...
Seeing Spots Q. What are floaters and flashers in the eye? A. Floaters are perceptions that semitransparent bodies are floating in the field of vision, according to The A.M.A. Encyclopedia of Medicine. They are usually shadows cast on the retina by small structures in the vitreous humor,...
YOU have always been proud of your 20/ 20 vision. You play tennis without glasses and prefer movies from the back row. When applying for a driver's license, you speed read to the bottom of the vision chart. So why does the world look so funny and fuzzy through the windshield at night? Why are...
A 55-YEAR-OLD man pulls into his driveway one night and notices that he is having trouble seeing the back door to his own house. A 62-year-old woman opens her bedroom closet and realizes that she can barely tell one piece of clothing from another.
LEAD: President Bush was found to have ''an early glaucoma of his left eye'' in a routine physical examination yesterday at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the White House said in a statement.
GEORGE K. had noticed a gradual loss of visual acuity in his left eye. More than two years ago, he'd had a cataract removed from that eye and a new lens implanted. Was this, too, becoming opaque, he wondered? He didn't wonder long, for his doctor had warned him not to ignore any changes in vision....
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