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The Maker of Gore-Tex Is Experimenting With an Artificial Cornea
- knolax 7y agoNot knowing what Gore-Tex I thought it was a TeX variant for the vision impaired. According to Wikipedia: "Gore-Tex is a waterproof, breathable fabric membrane and registered trademark of W. L. Gore and Associates."
- username223 7y agoYeah, it is a name for several types of fabric used in a lot of outdoor equipment. They all claim to be both waterproof and breathable, but in reality, they are mostly either one or the other. Waterproof Gore-Tex will fill with condensation, and breathable Gore-Tex will soak through. Pick your poison.
- Marsymars 7y agoThere are tradeoffs between waterproofing (hydrostatic head measured in mm) and breathability (measured in g/m^2/24h), but "one or the other" isn't really accurate, there are products that do very well at both.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago360 image was cool. But it made me swipe left and back out of the page.
- freefal 7y agoSwipe navigation in mobile Safari is a problem. Lichess.org recently did a very nice redesign that made it more mobile friendly. But the user can’t drag and drop pieces from the leftmost file because it’s interpreted as navigation. Safari doesn’t allow the webpage to listen for this event so there’s no way to call ‘preventDefault’. Basically unfixable if you want to use the whole screen as far as I know.
- dequor 7y agoIt was dusky evening, the clock knobs pointing at the two numbers before midnight all the while a tiny light serendipitously blinking in the distance. It was that moment in time I knew I was about to throw up reading yet another BB article ...
- unixhero 7y agoYeah that wasn't for the faint of heart. Pretty disgusting to be honest.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- new_guy 7y agoIt's an unfortunate name to be associated with eyes!
- varelse 7y agoAs someone with Fuchs Dystrophy (which is slowly blinding me), and writing style aside, I'd like to see the aging billionaires of Web 2.0 throw money at more ideas like this instead of at Hail Mary passes to immortality. Is that so much to ask for? I think it's realistic to live to 100 with 90+ good years. Without fundamental breakthroughs in science, it seems like a hard trek to get beyond that. https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/fuchs-corneal-dystrophy.htm https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/fuchs-corneal-dyst...
- guelo 7y agoInstead of relying on billionaire's whims I'd rather we taxed them more and used CDC's and NIH's epidemiology and scientist's opinions to fund research that benefits society the most.
- melling 7y agoYou want to tax all 536 billionaires? Capital gains perhaps? I’m not exactly sure why everyone middle class and above wouldn’t want to pay a little more for more medical research. We’ll all likely benefit. The ”let’s just tax the rich” is only going to get us so far.
- r00fus 7y agoAny stronger taxation scheme to make the rich pay their share is probably fine. I personally prefer a small financial transaction tax.
- archey1 7y agoIn the United States: The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent). The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes. The top 1% was 1.4 million returns in 2016. The top 50% is 140.9 million returns. How much is "fair"? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-u-s-taxpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sverige 7y agoI remember when their clothing line came out decades ago. These days I have what is essentially a Gore-Tex aorta attached to my heart. I'll bet they make a difference in eye repair. They're a pretty interesting company.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y agoInteresting that you mention this. My gut reaction to the article was along the lines of “smart rich maker doing some crazy innovative shit in an area totally unrelated from what they are known for”. Is there anything specific about Gore-Tex that would make you happy that they are pursuing the problem vs some other rich nerd? Not that rich nerds pursuing problems is a bad thing, I just want to know more about Gore-Tex specifically.
- folli 7y agohttps://www.gore.com/products/industries/life-sciences/medical-industry https://www.gore.com/products/industries/life-sciences/medic...
- everyone 7y agoOn a related note, I highly recommend this doc. (Goretex is made with Teflon) https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek Chemicals used to make Teflon, which cause cancer, deformity, etc, have been found in the blood of pretty much everyone worldwide.
- hannasanarion 7y agoNo, goretex and Teflon are made with an intermediate applicator chemical called PFOA, which is found in high quantities in carpets, wax paper, and some cleaning products and has been dumped in water sources near chemical factories. Its presence is negligible in clothing and cookware.
- everyone 7y agoYou say 'No' and then do not refute my statement, Just make a minor nitpicky remark (that its actually PFOA we're talking about) and some other true but ancillary remarks.
- johnmales 7y agoExisting artificial corneas have great difficulties with biocompatibility and more critically stability of the interface between the implant and the host eye tissues. Currently donor corneas are a much better option for most where this is available. If they can crack the issues this will make a difference, but they are not easy issues to solve. Corneal blindness is important cause of blindness worldwide, with a lot of the burden in places where corneal transplants are not available or not practical.
- gumby 7y agoIs the 1976 organizational memo online? I googled a little but couldn’t find it, just references to it.
- unixhero 7y agoWhy is this okay?