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Vision restored using prosthetic retinal implant

(NYT) — For the first time, researchers restored some vision to people with a common type of eye disease by using a prosthetic retinal implant. If approved for broader use in the future, the treatment could improve the lives of an estimated 1 million, mostly older, people in the United States who lose their vision to the condition.

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The patients’ blindness occurs when cells in the center of the retina start to die, what is known as geographic atrophy resulting from age-related macular degeneration. Without these cells, patients see a big black spot in the center of their vision, with a thin border of sight around it. Although their peripheral vision is preserved, people with this form of advanced macular degeneration cannot read, have difficulty recognizing faces or forms, and may have trouble navigating their surroundings.

In a study published Monday in The New England Journal of Medicine, vision in 27 out of 32 participants improved so much that they could read with their artificial retinas.

The vision that is restored is not normal: It’s black and white, blurry, and the field of view is small. But after getting the retinal implant, patients who could barely see gained on average five lines on a standard eye chart. The implant gets signals from glasses and a camera that projects infrared images to the artificial retina. The camera has a zoom feature that can magnify images like letters, allowing people to read, albeit slowly.

The retinal implant is a wireless chip about the size of a pinhead and as thin as a sheet of plastic wrap.

The chip alone does not let people see. They need a small camera attached to a pair of glasses that captures images, converts them to near-infrared light signals and then projects them onto the implant. The pixels in the retinal prosthesis convert near-infrared light into electric signals, which stimulate the remaining retinal neurons, allowing people to see.

All but 2 universities decline a Trump offer of preferential funding

(NYT) — Seven of the nine universities that the White House initially approached about a plan to steer more federal money toward schools aligned with President Donald Trump’s priorities have refused to endorse the proposal.

On Monday evening, an eighth signaled that it had reservations about it.

Only one, the University of Texas, suggested it might be open to signing on quickly.

The University of Arizona rejected the Trump administration’s compact Monday, joining Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and the University of Virginia.

Vanderbilt University did not directly express a view about the plan Monday — the deadline the Trump administration initially gave universities for feedback — but its chancellor suggested misgivings about parts of it.

The compact includes conditions like agreeing “that academic freedom is not absolute” and pledging to potentially shut down “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

Although the Trump administration floated the possibility of greater federal funding for schools that endorsed the plan, one university after another said they could not accept the terms.