Our Mechanical Eyes

Cutaneous mosaicism: right before our eyes.

Autosomal recessive cutaneous disorders, including various types of epidermolysis bullosa (EB), usually manifest shortly after birth. The clinical course of these diseases is often characterized by severe complications, limited therapeutic options, and a poor prognosis. A study by Pasmooij et al. reported in this issue of the JCI unravels the molecular mechanisms by which germline mutations in ...

Clearing the mist from our eyes: bronchodilators, mechanical ventilation, new devices, locations, and what you should know about bias flow.

Patients with obstructive lung disease often present with life-threatening respiratory failure, confounded by severe air-flow limitation, dynamic hyperinflation, intrinsic PEEP, reduced pulmonary compliance, hypercarbia, and hemodynamic instability. Inhaled bronchodilators play a vital role in the care of such patients and are one of the most widely prescribed medications in the critical care s...

Raising the CD4+ initiation threshold with our eyes wide open.

Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation

One of the brain's key roles is to facilitate foraging and feeding. It is presumably no coincidence, then, that the mouth is situated close to the brain in most animal species. However, the environments in which our brains evolved were far less plentiful in terms of the availability of food resources (i.e., nutriments) than is the case for those of us living in the Western world today. The grow...

The geomagnetic field influences the sensitivity of our eyes

Experiments involving the orientation of animals, especially birds, have shown that the visual system and geomagnetic field are linked. On the basis of these findings, we have addressed the question of whether there is an influence of the geomagnetic field on light-sensitivity of the visual system in man. Here we report on measurements of the photopic sensitivity of the human visual system for ...