Three-dimensional relationship between high-order root-mean-square wavefront error, pupil diameter, and aging

We report root-mean-square (RMS) wavefront error (WFE) for individual aberrations and cumulative highorder (HO) RMS WFE for the normal human eye as a function of age by decade and pupil diameter in 1 mm steps from 3 to 7 mm and determine the relationship among HO RMS WFE, mean age for each decade of life, and luminance for physiologic pupil diameters. Subjects included 146 healthy individuals from 20 to 80 years of age. Ocular aberration was measured on the preferred eye of each subject (for a total of 146 eyes through dilated pupils; computed for 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 mm pupils; and described with a tenth-radial-order normalized Zernike expansion. We found that HO RMS WFE increases faster with increasing pupil diameter for any given age and pupil diameter than it does with increasing age alone. A planar function accounts for 99% of the variance in the 3-D space defined by mean log HO RMS WFE, mean age for each decade of life, and pupil diameter. When physiologic pupil diameters are used to estimate HO RMS WFE as a function of luminance and age, at low luminance 9 cd/m2 HO RMS WFE decreases with increasing age. This normative data set details (1) the 3-D relationship between HO RMS WFE and age for fixed pupil diameters and (2) the 3-D relationship among HO RMS WFE, age, and luminance for physiologic pupil diameters

Eclipsing post-common envelope binaries from the Catalina surveys

We analyse the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey light curves of 835 spectroscopically confirmed white dwarf plus main-sequence binaries from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with g < 19, in search of new eclipsing systems. We identify 29 eclipsing systems, 12 of which were previously unknown. This brings the total number of eclipsing white dwarf plus main-sequence binaries to 49. Our set of new eclipsing systems contains two with periods of 1.9 and 2.3 d, making them the longest period eclipsing white dwarf binaries known. We also identify one system which shows very large ellipsoidal modulation (almost 0.3 mag), implying that the system is both very close to Roche lobe overflow and at high inclination. However, our follow-up photometry failed to firmly detect an eclipse, meaning that either this system contains a cool white dwarf and hence the eclipse is very shallow and undetectable in our red-sensitive photometry or that it is non-eclipsing. Radial velocity measurements for the main-sequence stars in three of our newly identified eclipsing systems imply that their white dwarf masses are lower than those inferred from modelling their SDSS spectra. 13 non-eclipsing post-common envelope binaries were also identified, from either reflection or ellipsoidal modulation effects. The white dwarfs in our newly discovered eclipsing systems span a wide range of parameters, including low-mass (∼0.3 M_⊙), very hot (80 000 K) and a DC white dwarf. The spectral types of the main-sequence stars range from M2 to M6. This makes our sample ideal for testing white dwarf and low-mass star mass–radius relationships as well as close binary evolution

GBTQ+ safe sex entanglements: Finding the bacterial in the age of resistant STIs and prevention innovation

Few studies have explored community experiences of our increasingly resistant bacterial landscape, and, in the sphere of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) and antimicrobial resistance, there is even greater absence of community-centred research. This is despite a growth in STI transmission worldwide, which, alongside accelerated resistance, will disproportionately affect GBTQ+ (gay, bisexual, trans, queer+) populations. In this article, drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2024 with 49 cisgender and trans gay and bisexual men, trans women and gender diverse people, we explore contemporary GBTQ+ safe sex practices as they relate to the growing threat of antibiotic resistant STIs in Australia. Key themes identified where the pharmaceutical turn in safe sex practices, the tensions this produced, the complexities of condom use, and the influence of biographies on safe sex practices. We illustrate how the turn toward pharmaceutical solutions have reconfigured and continues to reconfigure safe sex, giving rise to pleasures that were hitherto ‘off-limits’ to many. However, escalating antibiotic resistance threatens to again alter community practices and relationships to STI prevention measures. Drawing on Barad, we develop these themes to theoretically conceptualise safe sex as not fixed, but as an entanglement that is relationally and iteratively (re)configured through the connections between objects, subjectivities, practices, temporalities, and the human-microbial dynamics entailed therein. Findings suggest public health and clinical communication about resistance should speak to population concerns about gut health, resistance vis-à-vis Doxy-PEP, changing definitions of safe sex, and the importance of pleasure

Aberrometry: the past, present and future of optometry

2 pages.-- Guest editorial for 'Optometry and Vision Science', Vol. 80, No. 1 (January 2003).Aberrometry of the human eye has progressed rapidly from research tool to clinical application. To appreciate how rapidly the field of clinical aberrometry is evolving, consider the following quotation from the editorial introduction to the 1997 Optometry and Vision Science feature issue on visual optics research:"Contemporary visual optics research is changing our mindset, our way of thinking about the optical system of the eye, and in the process is re-defining the field of visual optics. In the past, optical imperfections of the eye were conceived as simple refractive errors - defocus, astigmatism, and perhaps a bit of prism. In the future, optical imperfections of the eye will be conceived in a comprehensive theoretical framework which expresses the combined effect of all the eye’s optical imperfections as a two-dimensional aberrations map. When treated as a mathematical function, the aberration map may be used to compute image quality on the retina for simple points of light, for clinical test targets, or any complex object in the real world. Such computations will become routine optometric tools of the future for predicting the visual benefit to the patient of a full aberration correction. The aberration map will also become a prescription for the ideal correcting optics provided by a new kind of contact lens, spectacle lens, inter-ocular lens, or by refractive surgery".The future has arrived! In this issue of Optometry and Vision Science, readers will learn of new discoveries that expand our basic understanding of aberrometry and the optical quality of the eye.Peer reviewe

Monochromatic Wavefront Aberrations in Myopia

While several investigators have quantified the eye's higher order aberrations using a variety of techniques, to our knowledge little or no work has been published on the influence of the magnitude of refractive error on the eye's higher order aberrations. In this paper we present evidence which suggests that the eye's monochromatic wavefront aberrations tend to increase as a function of increasing myopia.</jats:p

Measuring visual performance as a function of pupil size in clinical populations

The eye's pupil defines the area of each optical surface used to form the retinal image. Intervention (e.g., radial keratotomy, photorefractive keratectomy, displaced IOL) and/or pathology (e.g., corneal degeneration or scarring) can markedly change the optical properties of the eye and aggravate or improve visual performance as a function of pupil size. The following constraints make measurement of these properties difficult: 1) the use of an artificial pupil placed in front of the eye, as opposed to natural pupil plane; 2) selection and maintenance of a relevant reference axis; and 3) selection and quantification of a reasonable psychophysical task. We address these constraints by employing 1) a Maxwellian view system with a variable exit pupil diameter imaged in the plane of the eye's entrance pupil; 2) a Thibos foveal achromatic alignicator to define the reference axis; and 3) a high contrast Bailey-Lovie acuity chart and a fixed letter scoring criteria. Measurements on patients prior to and after radial keratotomy and photorefractive keratectomy demonstrate that best corrected visual acuity is generally decreased following intervention for large pupils and is generally unchanged for small pupils.</jats:p