Anti-coup protests continue in Myanmar
Scientists have developed colour blindness-correcting contact lenses that use gold nanoparticles to filter light
YANGON, March 6, (AFP) - Anti-coup demonstrators returned to the streets of Myanmar Saturday, a day after a UN envoy urged the Security Council to hear the nation's “desperate pleas” and take swift action to restore democracy.
The country has been in turmoil since a February 1 putsch ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power, triggering a massive uprising from hundreds of thousands angered to be returned to military rule.
Security forces have escalated an increasingly brutal crackdown on demonstrators -- killing more than 50 people since the coup -- but protesters rallied again on Saturday. From the dusty roads of northern Lashio -- where young protesters stared down police behind homemade shields -- to central Loikaw city in view of Myanmar's eastern mountains, hundreds continued to march for democracy.
The country's vital sectors have been crippled by an ongoing “Civil Disobedience Movement” -- a campaign urging civil servants to boycott working under a military regime.
The impact has been felt on every level of the country, with shuttered hospitals, empty ministry offices, and banks unable to operate.
Contact lenses containing gold nanoparticles have been developed that filter light to help correct red-green colour-blindness.
Colour blindness is a condition in which certain hues can appear muted or hard to distinguish from each other — making some daily activities difficult.
Unlike existing tinted glasses for red-green colour blindness, the lenses created by a team from the UAE and the UK can also be made to correct other vision issues. And because they use non-toxic materials, they do not have the potential health issues that have been flagged with previous prototype lenses that used red dyes.
Before the lenses can reach the commercial market, however, they will need to be assessed in clinical trials, a study says. The study was undertaken by mechanical engineer Ahmed Salih, of Abu Dhabi's Khalifa University, and his colleagues. 'Colour vision deficiency is an ocular congenital disorder that affects 8 per cent of men and 0.5 per cent of women,' the researchers explained in their paper.
The most common forms of the disorder are protanopia and deuteranopia — collectively referred to as 'red-green colour blindness' — in which people have difficulty distinguishing, as the name implies, between greens and reds.
'Since there is no cure for this disorder, patients opt for wearables that aid in enhancing their colour perception,' the researchers added.
Patients with red-green colour blindness wear red-tinted glasses which can make these colours easier to see — but these spectacles tend to be bulky and they can't be used to correct other vision problems at the same time.
To make their contact lenses, the researchers mixed gold nanoparticles into a hydrogel, a special material made from a network of cross-linked polymers. This produced a red-tinted gel that filers wavelengths of light between 520–580 nanometres, the part of the spectrum in which red and green overlap.
The full findings of the study were published in the journal ACS Nano.