To review existing data for the prevalence of corrected, uncorrected, and inadequately corrected refractive errors and spectacle wear in Hungary.
Data from two nationwide cross-sectional studies were ...analysed. The Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness study collected population-based representative national data on the prevalence of visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive errors and spectacle coverage in 3523 people aged ≥50y (Group I). The Comprehensive Health Test Program of Hungary provided data on the use of spectacles in 80 290 people aged ≥18y (Group II).
In Group I, almost half of the survey population showed refractive errors for distant vision, about 10% of which were uncorrected (3.2% of all male participants and 5.0% of females). The distance spectacle coverage was 90.7% (91.9% in males; 90.2% in females). The proportion of inadequate distance spectacles was found to be 33.1%. Uncorrected presbyopia was found in 15.7% of participants. In all age groups (Group II), 65.4% of females and 56.0% of males used distance spectacles, and approximately 28.9% of these spectacles were found to be inappropriate for dioptric power (with 0.5 dioptres or more). The prevalence of inaccurate distance spectacles was significantly higher in older age groups (71y and above) in both sexes.
According to this population-based data, uncorrected refractive errors are not rare in Hungary. Despite recent national initiatives, further steps are required to reduce uncorrected refractive errors and associated negative effects on vision, such as avoidable visual impairment.
In order to fully grasp the spirit of our times, we need to analyse fully the contemporary relationship between spectacle and consumption: spectacular consumption and the spectacle of consumption. ...The chain of sign merchandise (Baudrillard, 1968) is simultaneously a mean and a vehicle of adherence to the productive and political system. It takes on extraordinary value from the moment it welcomes all that is non-rational in a rationalised society, as well as it embodies the anti-utilitarian aspect of a social system based solely on the logic of utilitarianism. In this sense, the cycle of spectacular consumption coincides with the consumption of bourgeois individuality, while the mass that has become public becomes the matrix in which the subject loses itself and cushions the weight of change in a way to express the impulses marginalized by the social system.
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•This essay examines the graffiti work of Zhang Dali in Beijing.•It advances the idea of “counter-spectacle”.•Zhang’s graffiti worked with and against urban spectacularism.•It shows cultural ...expression remains vital to contesting urban change.
This study advances a notion of counter-spectacle in current-day China by examining a graffiti project carried out in Beijing between 1995 and 2005 titled Dialogue by the artist Zhang Dali (张大力). The essay draws attention to the opportunities and limitations for resistance amid urban spectacle and examines them through a detailed case study in an aspiring “world city.” The paper argues that a theory of urban counter-spectacle that integrates the role of oppositional practices at the intersection of cultural and spatial change can help to explain the unstable nature of China’s contemporary urbanism. More broadly, it expands debates on state-society conflict by demonstrating how urban spaces function as sites of social activism and as alternative fora for contentious politics through the production of meaning in specific spaces.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
To determine if 'Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments' (DIMS) spectacle lenses slow childhood myopia progression.
A 2-year double-masked randomised controlled trial was carried out in 183 Chinese ...children aged 8-13 years, with myopia between -1.00 and -5.00 D and astigmatism ≤1.50 D. Children were randomly assigned to wear DIMS (n=93) or single vision (SV) spectacle lenses (n=90). DIMS lens incorporated multiple segments with myopic defocus of +3.50 D. Refractive error (cycloplegic autorefraction) and axial length were measured at 6month intervals.
160 children completed the study, n=79 in the DIMS group and n=81 in the SV group. Average (SE) myopic progressions over 2 years were -0.41±0.06 D in the DIMS group and -0.85±0.08 D in the SV group. Mean (SE) axial elongation was 0.21±0.02 mm and 0.55±0.02 mm in the DIMS and SV groups, respectively. Myopia progressed 52% more slowly for children in the DIMS group compared with those in the SV group (mean difference -0.44±0.09 D, 95% CI -0.73 to -0.37, p<0.0001). Likewise, children in the DIMS group had less axial elongation by 62% than those in the SV group (mean difference 0.34±0.04 mm, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.37, p<0.0001). 21.5% children who wore DIMS lenses had no myopia progression over 2 years, but only 7.4% for those who wore SV lenses.
Daily wear of the DIMS lens significantly retarded myopia progression and axial elongation in myopic children. Our results demonstrated simultaneous clear vision with constant myopic defocus can slow myopia progression.
NCT02206217.
The power distribution, high-order polynomial, bicubic spline interpolation, and geometric construction methods were used to reduce the edge thickness and weight of negative blended lenticular ...lenses. Four lenses with the same optical parameters were designed, simulated, machined, and evaluated using the four methods. Spherical and cylindrical power maps were generated and compared. The methods reduced the edge thickness by 78.73% for power distribution method, 77.40% for high-order polynomial method, 78.12% for bicubic spline interpolation method and 79.86% for geometric construction method for a 35 mm radius compared to that with the spherical surface. Geometric construction, power distribution, high-order polynomial, and bicubic spline interpolation reduced the lens weight by 43.86%, 35.98%, 33.06%, and 29.76%, respectively. The center optical area for the power distribution and geometric construction methods were larger than those with the other methods.
•Power distribution, high-order polynomial, bicubic spline interpolation, and geometric construction profiles were applied.•Four NBL lenses were designed, simulated, manufactured and compared based on their powers, edge thickness and weight.•The optical area of high-order polynomial profile was the smallest to compare with other three profiles.•The edge thickness and weight of the lens obtained using the geometric construction profile showed maximum reduction.
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Considering formative twentieth-century theories in relation to contemporary technosocial developments, this article examines ideas of spectacle and surveillance as ways of approaching visual ...politics. I argue that the historically important relationship between the visual and political fields is now intensifying and mutating. First discussing Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, I show how his influential approach proves inadequate to the politics of image-saturated societies. I next show how critics of imperial and racial spectacles, from Michael Rogin to Claudia Rankine and Tina Campt, provide better ways of engaging power and political contestation in the visual field. Third, I examine how Michel Foucault deployed notions of spectacle in his own work but argued for leaving the term behind, presenting surveillance as not just a different modality of power but also spectacle’s temporal successor. This account remains essential for both historical understanding and reckoning with contemporary surveillance. Fourth, however, as Simone Browne argues, Foucault’s separation between spectacle and surveillance is too stark, his history too prone to occlude race. Furthermore, recent surveillance technologies and practices have changed in ways that confound his terms, while extending and also altering the racial dynamics explored earlier in the essay. Today, even surveillance based on optical media contributes to a “postvisual” image world in which algorithmic, machine-machine communication abets forms of power neither tied to human perception nor graspable as subject formation. With surprising assistance from Debord, I end by discussing the significant theoretical and political challenges posed by the ironies of postvisual visuality.
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From plantation performances to minstrel shows of the late nineteenth century, the roots of black theatre in Texas reflect the history of a state where black Texans have continually created powerful ...cultural emblems that defy the clichés of horses, cattle, and bravado. Drawing on troves of archival materials from numerous statewide sources, Stages of Struggle and Celebration captures the important legacies of the dramatic arts in a historical field that has paid most of its attention to black musicians. Setting the stage, the authors retrace the path of the cakewalk and African-inspired dance as forerunners to formalized productions at theaters in the major metropolitan areas. From Houston’s Ensemble and Encore Theaters to the Jubilee in Fort Worth, gospel stage plays of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in Dallas, as well as San Antonio’s Hornsby Entertainment Theater Company and Renaissance Guild, concluding with ProArts Collective in Austin, Stages of Struggle and Celebration features founding narratives, descriptions of key players and memorable productions, and enlightening discussions of community reception and the business challenges faced by each theatre. The role of drama departments in historically black colleges in training the companies’ founding members is also explored, as is the role the support of national figures such as Tyler Perry plays in ensuring viability. A canon of Texas playwrights completes the tour. The result is a diverse tribute to the artistic legacies that continue to inspire new generations of producers and audiences.
This book explores parallels between two ancient practices – performance and medicine – that are currently coming together in unprecedented ways on theatre stages, in arts and health initiatives, in ...healthcare education and in medical settings. This convergence sheds new light on what it means to be human at a time when the ‘concept of the human’ is being ‘exploded’ (Braidotti, 2013). It studies performance through the lens of medicine, revealing how theatre, like medicine, puts the body on display in order to understand and alleviate human suffering.And it examines medicine as a sort of theatre in which doctors, nurses and patients perform. A wide range of medical performances serve to illustrate the discussion: main stage productions such as Jack Thorne’s adaption of Woycek starring John Boyega, Clod Ensemble’s Placebo and Bryony Kimmings and Brian Lobel’s the Pacifists Guide on the War Against Cancer, but also scenes enacted in a hospital ward, a pathology lab, medical school classrooms, a simulation suite and rehearsal studios. Written from the perspective of a theatre and performance scholar, the book draws on the multiple perspectives enabled by this reciprocal exploration. Through this it addresses recent radical shifts, often provoked by advances in biomedical science, relating to human corporeality, embodiment, subject-hood and subjectivity; and it investigates resulting debates about our humanism and humaneness.
Invoking James J. Murphy’s reminder that we can still learn from people of the past, this article examines Thomas Hoccleve’s 1420 poem “My Compleinte” as an example of medieval “disability ...rhetorics,” or how disabled people themselves speak about disability and being disabled. In this poem, Hoccleve adapts the genre of the speculum principis (mirror for princes), which guides readers toward moral action, to depict his past mental breakdown and subsequent social alienation in order to exhort his former friends to amend their attitudes toward him. While disability as a concept and an identity proves anachronistic in relation to the Middle Ages, Hoccleve’s poem presents a vital case study in ethos construction driven by disability, reflecting some of the same rhetorical concerns facing disabled rhetors today despite the passage of time.
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![“[S]treite vnto my mirrour ...](http://api.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/image/issn/XR4PS5YY4K/2687-8003/small "“[S]treite vnto my mirrour and my glas”: Disabled Ethos in Thomas Hoccleve’s “My Compleinte”")
