Vision and Reading Difficulties Part 5: Clinical protocol and the role of the eye-care practitioner

This series of articles has described various aspects of visual characteristics of reading difficulties and the background behind techniques such as the use of coloured filters in helping to reduce the difficulties that are experienced. The present article, which is the last in series, aims to describe a clinical protocol that can be used by the busy eye care practitioner for the investigation and management of such patients. It also describes the testing techniques that can be used for the various assessments. Warning: DO NOT LOOK AT FIGURE 7 IF YOU HAVE MIGRAINE OR EPILEPSY

Vision and Reading Difficulties Part 4: Coloured filters - how do they work?

This article is the fourth in a series of five about vision and reading difficulties. The first article provided a general overview and the second covered conventional optometric correlates of reading difficulties (e.g. binocular vision problems). The present article continues on from the third article by describing the use of coloured filters in treating a condition now known as visual stress. Visual stress is often associated with reading difficulties, but also a variety of other neurological conditions. This article concentrates on the possible mechanisms for the benefit from coloured filters, beginning with obvious peripheral factors. The terminology for this condition has changed over the years (e.g. Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, and Meares-Irlen Syndrome) and the issue of terminology is discussed at the end of this article. Warning: DO NOT LOOK AT FIGURE 6 ON PAGE 33 IF YOU HAVE A MIGRAINE OR EPILEPSY

Vision and Reading Difficulties Part 1: Specific learning difficulties and vision

This article is the first in a series of five about vision and reading difficulties, and provides an introduction and an overview of learning disabilities and specific learning difficulties. It outlines the role of the optometrist in helping people with such problems; it describes the symptoms that optometrists should look for and it provides an introduction of the evidence-based approach. The second article in this series will cover the optometric and orthoptic correlates of reading difficulties. Articles three and four will describe the use of coloured filters, including background, techniques, evidence, and mechanism. The final article will draw together the themes in the series of articles and discuss the clinical protocol and the role of the eye care practitioner in managing visual factors associated with reading difficulties

Vision and Reading Difficulties Part 3: Coloured filters - do they work?

This is the third article in a series of five on Vision and Reading Difficulties. The first article provided a general overview of learning disabilities and specific learning difficulties (SpLD). It outlined the role of the optometrist in helping people with SpLD. The second article covered conventional optometric correlates of reading difficulties (e.g. binocular vision problems) This article and the next will describe the use of coloured filters to treat a condition now know as "visual stress", which is often associated with reading difficulties; the symptoms of visual stress were described in Part 1. The terminology for this condition has changed over the years (e.g. Scotopic Sensitivity syndrome, Meares-Irlen syndrome). Terminology is discussed more in Part 4

Regional and seasonal patterns of epipelagic fish assemblages from the central California Current

The coastal Pacific Ocean off northern and central California encompasses the strongest seasonal upwelling zone in the California Current ecosystem. Headlands and bays here generate complex circulation features and confer unusual oceanographic complexity. We sampled the coastal epipelagic fish community of this region with a surface trawl in the summer and fall of 2000–05 to assess patterns of spatial and temporal community structure. Fifty-three species of fish were captured in 218 hauls at 34 fixed stations, with clupeiform species dominating. To examine spatial patterns, samples were grouped by location relative to a prominent headland at Point Reyes and the resulting two regions, north coast and Gulf of the Farallones, were plotted by using nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Seasonal and interannual patterns were also examined, and representative species were identified for each distinct community. Seven oceanographic variables measured concurrently with trawling were plotted by principal components analysis and tested for correlation with biotic patterns. We found significant differences in community structure by region, year, and season, but no interaction among main effects. Significant differences in oceanographic conditions mirrored the biotic patterns, and a match between biotic and hydrographic structure was detected. Dissimilarity between assemblages was mostly the result of differences in abundance and frequency of occurrence of about twelve common species. Community patterns were best described by a subset of hydrographic variables, including water depth, distance from shore, and any one of several correlated variables associated with upwelling intensity. Rather than discrete communities with clear borders and distinct member species, we found gradients in community structure and identified stations with similar fish communities by region and by proximity to features such as the San Francisco Bay

Vision and Reading Difficulties Part 2: Optometric correlates of reading difficulties

In this second article of the series on vision and reading difficulties, the optometric factors (for example refractive error and orthoptic function) that may be associated with reading problems are discussed in detail. The first article of this series introduced the correlates of, and interventions for, reading difficulties that have been supported by evidence-based research. This present article describes the optometric correlates more specifically, providing details of the aspects of visual function that ought to be considered for further investigation

Pacific Childhoods in the Rafu: Multiple Transnational Modernisms and the Los Angeles Nisei, 1918-1942

The second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who grew up in the Los Angeles area before the Second World War had two primary cultures seemingly competing for their attention: that of their first-generation parents (Issei) and that of the dominant culture surrounding them. However, the generation gap between the Issei and Nisei was extreme, with the former being raised right in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution in Japan while the latter was raised in the United States during the Revolution’s consolidation into the modern that stressed science over tradition, organization over instinct, and intellect over tradition. Previous studies paint many Issei as somewhat passive parents who wanted their children to simply be “American.” Similar studies define the childhoods of Nisei as one in which they were either adopted Americanness or upheld traditional Japaneseness, thereby creating second-generation Americans who demonstrated binary cultural traits that were identifiably “American” or “Japanese” who often could not clearly define their own ethnic identities or senses of self. However, an examination of the lives of Nisei who were children and adolescents before their Second World War internment demonstrates that binary enculturation greatly oversimplifies the transnational links between Japan, United States, and modernity. This is particularly true in the Greater Los Angeles region (also known as the “Southland”) which was one of the most ethnically diverse, least dense, and proudly progressive regions in the United States between 1918 and 1942, the period in which most Nisei were in their childhood and adolescent phases. Because of the accepting nature of the Southland, the children of the Issei could choose what activities to accept or deny not based on that activity’s ethnic origin, but on that activity’s utility and level of acceptableness to their parents and the larger society. Issei were far from passive and well-understood the implications of their children’s choices. Before immigrating to the United States, both male and female Issei experienced Japan’s rapid strides toward modernity and were consistently aware of the state of Japan’s modernization. After Japanese immigration was cut off and after Issei were declared ineligible for citizenship, their Nisei children—American citizens thanks to their birth—were simply too valuable to a household’s future to raise passively. Also thanks to the region’s welcoming nature, Nisei children and adolescents in the Southland were insulated from harshly overt forms of racism and felt a great degree of flexibility in defining their choices on their own terms. Consequently, Nisei were accepted into the fabric of Southland culture before World War II in a way similar to most other immigrant children during this period. This cultural history examines three larger categories of cultural affiliation presented to the Nisei and the way in which these children chose to accept and reject elements of each: Compulsory American education and Japanese language school; the sports of judo and baseball; and the faiths, Buddhism and Christianity. In a larger sense, the story of the Nisei is similar to the larger narrative of multiethnic America and a nation’s attempts to find a balance between the requirements of the dominant culture and the need for children to discover their own multiethnic self-narrative. This study also highlights the profound transnational connections between the United States and Japan during the years before the Second World War and how those transnational links affected the lives of Nisei children. In doing this, this study hopes to add to literature not only on American Nisei, but also on the research of ethnic acculturation, the effects of modernity upon immigration, and cultural responses to transnational channels of influence