Word: retina
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Blue Flash. Scientists have known for decades, says Hunt, that the dark-adapted human eye can detect X rays and gamma rays as a yellow-green glow. This sensation apparently comes from direct action of the rays on minute light-sensitive cells in the eye's retina, but it has almost no value as a practical warning sense. When the eye is not darkadapted, and it hardly ever is, the retina is sensitive only to massive doses of radiation from such disasters as runaway nuclear reactors. On these unhappy occasions, the victim sees a vivid blue flash...
Immediate surgery was indicated to replace a detached retina, but Scientist-Author Sir Charles Percy Snow, 56, illuminator of the modern scientific mind in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, first wanted to deliver a speech as 30th Lord Rector of St. Andrews University in Scotland. The operation failed, and he lost the sight in his left eye. "I have no regrets," said Sir Charles in London's Moorfields Eye Hospital. "It was never much good anyway. I still have a good right...
...year or so. His novel, The Affair, became a London stage hit that is Broadway bound; his Harvard lectures, "Science and Government," roused a storm that roiled the Establishment. Last month Critic F. R. Leavis subjected him to a savage literary mugging, and soon after, Snow suffered a detached retina that may cost the sight of his left eye. But last week Sir Charles ignored all trials for a new triumph: his installation as 30th Lord Rector of Scotland's ancient (1411) St. Andrews University. Snow postponed an eye operation for the ceremony...
Unique Anatomies. Other animals in the N.I.H. menagerie are prized for their unique anatomies. The primitive mammalian ear of the possum is used for hearing experiments. The simple retina of the squid proves to be an aid in eye research. Chinchillas, described as "castoffs not suitable for fur coats," have middle-ear cavities larger and more accessible than those of other mammals. Physiologists are able to explore the neural pathways involved in hearing...
...main job of any brain is to make the best use of reports from the senses. Wells says that octopus senses are pretty sensible. An octopus eye is built much like a human eye; both have a lens that throws an image on a light-sensitive retina. The chief difference is that the human eye is focused by muscles that change the shape of the lens. In the octopus eye the lens is moved back and forth, like that of a camera, to get a sharp focus. This arrangement seems to work efficiently for octopuses. In fact, the ghastly, slit...