5 ms·

> The next step, more controversial, would be super-vision of tetrachromacity, perhaps infra-red and ultra-violet sensitivity. Night vision glasses no longer ne

> The next step, more controversial, would be super-vision of tetrachromacity, perhaps infra-red and ultra-violet sensitivity. Night vision glasses no longer needed for enhanced soldiers. Utter poppycock. The cornea and lens in humans are UV opaque, which is a very good thing because UV light is damaging. People without a lens (aphakia) are reported to perceive UV light, but this is otherwise an undesirable condition. As to infrared, some people can already see up to around 750nm or so (NIR) with awful quantum efficiency. Pit vipers and some fish have limited perception of IR, but I'm not aware of any animals that can see IR in the conventional sense… being warm blooded presents a real problem, for one. Plainly, there are limits to what can be achieved in hyperspectral imaging due to materials, and that's without the constraints of biology thrown in the mix.

scott_s 11y ago
Your comment would be much better without the first line.
- lsh 11y ago
  And your tepid comments are just as useless.
  - dang 11y ago
    scott_s was right, because the GP broke the HN guidelines by name-calling (in an otherwise fine comment). Your comment does too. Please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - OopsCriticality 11y ago
      Honestly, if this were reddit I would have deleted the entire post when scott_s pointed out it was harsh; it was hastily written in a moment of supreme frustration. Sorry!
      - scott_s 11y ago
        The reason I commented is that the rest of your comment was excellent, and very informative. (I did not know our cornea and lens are UV opaque. And then the subsequent follow-ups to your point, explaining that it's more subtle than that by nl and blincoln, were also very interesting.) Your knowledge of the subject and willingness to explain it indicates to me that you're valuable to the HN community. So I felt it was worthwhile to point out the one bit of your comment which doesn't work well on HN, since your account is new.
        OopsCriticality 11y ago
        > Your knowledge of the subject and willingness to explain it indicates to me that you're valuable to the HN community. You're too charitable. The truth is I'm unemployed at what feels to be a particularly bad time of the year to be unemployed (think of all the family and friends get-togethers… "so, what do you do?"), and I'm bludgeoning people on the internet with domain knowledge in some lame effort to stroke ego rather than facing a bleak job market for someone of my background. It's a harsh toke, but admitting it (even pseudononymously) is the only way I'm going to do anything about it.
        pen2l 11y ago
        > "so, what do you do?" You don't have to say "I'm unemployed to that answer". You can still say you're a programmer, if you're a programmer! Even better, you can start a little project and call it a "startup". Tell 'em you're a hip little entrepreneur - that's even cooler than being employed in some circles. :)
        OopsCriticality 11y ago
        Your comment is kind, and appreciated. Thank you.
        scott_s 11y ago
        By the way, being charitable in iterperting what others write here is one of HN's tenets. You've demonstrated self reflection and contrition. That puts you ahead of most.
nl 11y ago
Utter poppycock. That seems... strong, especially if referring to the "Night vision glasses no longer needed for enhanced soldiers" bit. They eventually formulate a chlorin e6 solution for human use. A few drops are dripped into Licina’s eyes, and they had him look for people hidden among trees as well as symbols on objects in dim light. Licina seemed to perform a lot better than the four other people who did not get eyedrops. http://gizmodo.com/the-real-science-behind-the-crazy-night-vision-eyedrops-1694955347 http://gizmodo.com/the-real-science-behind-the-crazy-night-v...
- OopsCriticality 11y ago
  My frustration was more directed towards the UV-Vis-NIR part (and I read night vision as thermal IR, but who knows), but I wouldn't say that your linked article is something of substance. To quote the article, quoting the experimenter/ee, "In Licina’s own words: 'Let’s be fair here. It’s kind of crap science.'" I wouldn't even know where to begin in criticizing their study as disseminated on their website except to say it is completely unscientific. There are no proper controls, for one. I think it's wholly irresponsible of the press to report on this work in this fashion at such a premature stage. I respect the enthusiasm of the citizen science crowd and think it's a neat idea, but stuff like this is going to quickly earn it a very bad reputation.
blincoln 11y ago
The natural human cornea is opaque to shorter-wavelength UV, but there's no reason it couldn't be replaced with something transparent to UV-A at least. This is supposedly an unintended side-effect of some cornea replacement surgery[1]. UV may have the potential to be damaging, but plenty of animals see UV-A safely - for example, bees[2] and mantis shrimp[3] can perceive UV to 300nm. Some birds (whose eyes are much more like ours, of course) can also perceive UV[4][5]. If we wanted some ready-made genes, I vote for borrowing from the European starling, which has receptors that sit in our enormous gap between blue/violet and green as well as UV-A [6]. Near infrared could be very useful, because (in combination with red, green, etc.) it can be used to easily distinguish vegetation, and it scatters less in the atmosphere, so it could allow clear vision at much farther distances. Most materials that are transparent to red/green/blue are also transparent to NIR, so as far as I know, the rest of the eye shouldn't need to be modified. Most people can apparently see a little bit into the NIR if they wear NIR-bandpass goggles, but it's extremely dim and doesn't have a perceived colour that's distinct from the rest of the visible spectrum, so that's not really what the GP is suggesting. They're suggesting wiring up a true NIR-specific receptor in the eye which would provide a fourth, fifth, or sixth primary colour (in addition to red, green, blue, and optionally the in-between-red-and-green that tetrachromats see as well as a hypothetical UV-A receptor). I can't find a cite at the moment, but some birds have NIR patterning on their feathers (I have photographed this myself at a zoo), and the last time I looked into it, there was some speculation that tropical birds in particular had some NIR sensitivity (in addition to UV-A) and had evolved spectrally-complex colouration as a result. Thermal infrared is a much longer wavelength, and I'm not aware of a good material for lenses/eyes that is transparent to both. It's possible to have an uncooled sensor that detects it, but I agree that it's a much larger leap than UV-A or NIR. [1] http://www.itworld.com/article/2732596/consumer-tech-science/real-world-superpowers--eye-surgery-lets-some-see-well-into-the-ultraviolet.html http://www.itworld.com/article/2732596/consumer-tech-science... [2] https://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/newscolumns/archives/OSL/2012/June/120614OSL.html https://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/newscolumns/archiv... [3] http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mantis-shrimp-see-things-differently-literally http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mantis-shrimp-s... [4] http://www.livescience.com/26994-how-birds-uv-vision.html http://www.livescience.com/26994-how-birds-uv-vision.html [5] http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/17B.html http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/17B.html

scott_s 11y ago

Your comment would be much better without the first line.

lsh 11y ago
And your tepid comments are just as useless.
- dang 11y ago
  scott_s was right, because the GP broke the HN guidelines by name-calling (in an otherwise fine comment). Your comment does too. Please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - OopsCriticality 11y ago
    Honestly, if this were reddit I would have deleted the entire post when scott_s pointed out it was harsh; it was hastily written in a moment of supreme frustration. Sorry!
    - scott_s 11y ago
      The reason I commented is that the rest of your comment was excellent, and very informative. (I did not know our cornea and lens are UV opaque. And then the subsequent follow-ups to your point, explaining that it's more subtle than that by nl and blincoln, were also very interesting.) Your knowledge of the subject and willingness to explain it indicates to me that you're valuable to the HN community. So I felt it was worthwhile to point out the one bit of your comment which doesn't work well on HN, since your account is new.
      - OopsCriticality 11y ago
        > Your knowledge of the subject and willingness to explain it indicates to me that you're valuable to the HN community. You're too charitable. The truth is I'm unemployed at what feels to be a particularly bad time of the year to be unemployed (think of all the family and friends get-togethers… "so, what do you do?"), and I'm bludgeoning people on the internet with domain knowledge in some lame effort to stroke ego rather than facing a bleak job market for someone of my background. It's a harsh toke, but admitting it (even pseudononymously) is the only way I'm going to do anything about it.
        pen2l 11y ago
        > "so, what do you do?" You don't have to say "I'm unemployed to that answer". You can still say you're a programmer, if you're a programmer! Even better, you can start a little project and call it a "startup". Tell 'em you're a hip little entrepreneur - that's even cooler than being employed in some circles. :)
        OopsCriticality 11y ago
        Your comment is kind, and appreciated. Thank you.
        scott_s 11y ago
        By the way, being charitable in iterperting what others write here is one of HN's tenets. You've demonstrated self reflection and contrition. That puts you ahead of most.

nl 11y ago

Utter poppycock. That seems... strong, especially if referring to the "Night vision glasses no longer needed for enhanced soldiers" bit. They eventually formulate a chlorin e6 solution for human use. A few drops are dripped into Licina’s eyes, and they had him look for people hidden among trees as well as symbols on objects in dim light. Licina seemed to perform a lot better than the four other people who did not get eyedrops. http://gizmodo.com/the-real-science-behind-the-crazy-night-vision-eyedrops-1694955347 http://gizmodo.com/the-real-science-behind-the-crazy-night-v...

OopsCriticality 11y ago
My frustration was more directed towards the UV-Vis-NIR part (and I read night vision as thermal IR, but who knows), but I wouldn't say that your linked article is something of substance. To quote the article, quoting the experimenter/ee, "In Licina’s own words: 'Let’s be fair here. It’s kind of crap science.'" I wouldn't even know where to begin in criticizing their study as disseminated on their website except to say it is completely unscientific. There are no proper controls, for one. I think it's wholly irresponsible of the press to report on this work in this fashion at such a premature stage. I respect the enthusiasm of the citizen science crowd and think it's a neat idea, but stuff like this is going to quickly earn it a very bad reputation.

blincoln 11y ago

The natural human cornea is opaque to shorter-wavelength UV, but there's no reason it couldn't be replaced with something transparent to UV-A at least. This is supposedly an unintended side-effect of some cornea replacement surgery[1]. UV may have the potential to be damaging, but plenty of animals see UV-A safely - for example, bees[2] and mantis shrimp[3] can perceive UV to 300nm. Some birds (whose eyes are much more like ours, of course) can also perceive UV[4][5]. If we wanted some ready-made genes, I vote for borrowing from the European starling, which has receptors that sit in our enormous gap between blue/violet and green as well as UV-A [6]. Near infrared could be very useful, because (in combination with red, green, etc.) it can be used to easily distinguish vegetation, and it scatters less in the atmosphere, so it could allow clear vision at much farther distances. Most materials that are transparent to red/green/blue are also transparent to NIR, so as far as I know, the rest of the eye shouldn't need to be modified. Most people can apparently see a little bit into the NIR if they wear NIR-bandpass goggles, but it's extremely dim and doesn't have a perceived colour that's distinct from the rest of the visible spectrum, so that's not really what the GP is suggesting. They're suggesting wiring up a true NIR-specific receptor in the eye which would provide a fourth, fifth, or sixth primary colour (in addition to red, green, blue, and optionally the in-between-red-and-green that tetrachromats see as well as a hypothetical UV-A receptor). I can't find a cite at the moment, but some birds have NIR patterning on their feathers (I have photographed this myself at a zoo), and the last time I looked into it, there was some speculation that tropical birds in particular had some NIR sensitivity (in addition to UV-A) and had evolved spectrally-complex colouration as a result. Thermal infrared is a much longer wavelength, and I'm not aware of a good material for lenses/eyes that is transparent to both. It's possible to have an uncooled sensor that detects it, but I agree that it's a much larger leap than UV-A or NIR. [1] http://www.itworld.com/article/2732596/consumer-tech-science/real-world-superpowers--eye-surgery-lets-some-see-well-into-the-ultraviolet.html http://www.itworld.com/article/2732596/consumer-tech-science... [2] https://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/newscolumns/archives/OSL/2012/June/120614OSL.html https://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/newscolumns/archiv... [3] http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mantis-shrimp-see-things-differently-literally http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mantis-shrimp-s... [4] http://www.livescience.com/26994-how-birds-uv-vision.html http://www.livescience.com/26994-how-birds-uv-vision.html [5] http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/17B.html http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/17B.html