By Staff
Tuesday, April 9, 2019 12:05 PM
On April 9, Alcon debuted as an independent, publicly traded company as it completed its separation from Novartis. The company’s shares begin trading yesterday on the SIX Swiss Exchange and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “ALC.” Alcon is one of the largest eyecare device companies in the world, with complementary businesses in Surgical and Vision Care. The company has a global presence in 74 countries and serves patients in more than 140, with fast-growing businesses in emerging markets. According to a news release from the company, Alcon has a wide array of eyecare offerings in the industry with products that can treat eye disorders at each stage of life. “For more than 70 years, Alcon has been dedicated to helping people see brilliantly and now, as an independent company, we are pursuing even more opportunities to further that mission,” said David Endicott, CEO of Alcon.
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By Staff
Monday, April 8, 2019 3:50 PM
At one large company in New Zealand, some employees no longer work on Fridays. Others don’t work Wednesdays. But everyone is paid a full-time salary. Perpetual Guardian, a statutory trust company with 240 employees, first tested a four-day workweek in early 2018, collaborating with academic researchers from two Auckland universities to study the impact on its business. After the eight-week-long trial, employees reported lower levels of stress, higher levels of job satisfaction, and a much greater sense of work-life balance. Just as significantly, despite the reduced hours, productivity didn’t decline. In November, the company decided to make the changes permanent. Andrew Barnes, the company’s founder, has thus far seen no downside. “In fact, the company is performing better than it did last year.” Click
here to read the full story from
Fast Company.
By Staff
Friday, April 5, 2019 12:07 PM
As difficult as it is to believe, Golden Stare Warriors star Stephen Curry, who is arguably the best shooter on the planet, has had trouble seeing for his entire NBA career. Curry has the condition Keratoconus, which causes distorted and blurred vision. So, Curry recently got contact lenses. It's probably not an accident that following a slump after the All-Star break, he went on a nine-game streak with over five 3-pointers per game. Curry says his contacts have entirely changed the game for him. “It’s exactly that,” Curry said when asked if he feels like he has new eyes. “It’s like the whole world has opened up.” That could only spell trouble for the opposing teams. Read the
story on USA Today Sports.
By Staff
Thursday, April 4, 2019 3:54 PM
The food we eat is putting 11 million of us into an early grave each year, an influential study shows.
The analysis, in the Lancet, found that our daily diet is a bigger killer than smoking and is now involved in one in five deaths around the world. Salt—whether in bread, soy sauce or processed meals—shortened the highest number of lives. Researchers say this study is not about obesity, but "poor quality" diets damaging hearts and causing cancer. The Global Burden of Disease Study is the most authoritative assessment of how people are dying in every country in the world. The latest analysis used estimates of countries' eating habits to pin down how often diet was shortening lives. The dangerous diets were those containing: too much salt, 3 million deaths; too few whole grains, 3 million deaths, too little fruit, 2 million deaths. Read the full story in the
BBC News.
By Staff
Wednesday, April 3, 2019 4:08 PM
The beauty industry, which increasingly aims to cater to every creed and color, has largely ignored visually impaired people like Ha. This is bizarre when you consider that 36 million people worldwide are totally blind, and 217 million have moderate to severe visual impairment. “People think just because blind women can’t see, they don’t care about what they look like,” says Sam Latif, who was diagnosed with low vision at five years old due to a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, eventually losing her sight completely in early adulthood. “They think that the visually impaired don’t spend money on beauty products or can’t apply makeup so they’re not relevant to this industry. Fortunately, that notion is being challenged from the inside by people like Latif — she is Procter & Gamble’s special consultant on inclusive design, a new role that helps ensure products are designed, packaged, and advertised to be inclusive for the 1.3 billion people worldwide who have a disability. Change is also coming thanks to the success of blind and visually impaired beauty bloggers, like YouTuber
Molly Burke, who has 1.7 million subscribers, and
Lucy Edwards, CoverGirl’s first blind beauty ambassador. Click
here to read more.
By Staff
Tuesday, April 2, 2019 3:36 PM
The gender pay gap is shrinking, but at this rate, it might not vanish until 2070. Women in the U.S. on average earn $0.79 for every $1 their male colleagues make, according to a
new report by the job search and salary tracker site Glassdoor. The study, released Tuesday, calculated the adjusted pay gap, which accounts for variables like age, education, and industry, at 4.9 percent, down 0.5 percent from three years ago. Meanwhile, the unadjusted pay gap in the U.S. is 21.4 percent, and while that figure has shrunk by 2.7 percent since 2016, it won't fully close for another 51 years unless employers do more to fight pay disparity. The report comes before Equal Pay Day on April 2, a date determined by the
National Committee on Pay Equity that symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men made in the previous year.
Read more about the wage gap in this post from Inc.com.
By Staff
Monday, April 1, 2019 3:01 PM
Microsoft has come up with a smart way of helping people who are blind or visually impaired to be better aware of where they are. This is done using 3D audio cues, which reach the person via any pair of earphones. Making it happen is an app called Soundscapes, loaded with 3D recorded navigation information that has been crowdsourced. As a person walks around the city, with phone and earphones handy, guidance comes through on street and location, on stores, places of interest, landmarks etc. The 3D makes these cues directional, so if you’re passing by Cee’s Candy Store on your right, you get the cue in your right ear. The directionality of the guidance makes it all the more natural—intersection coming up in front of you, McDonalds coming up on the left, etc. Read more about this technology from Microsoft here.
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By Staff
Friday, March 29, 2019 5:21 PM
It’s the end of a long workday. Your body and brain are ready for a break. You may not realize that your eyes need one too. Looking at a computer screen all day, your eyes get redder, drier and more irritated, and when you get home, you unwind with even more screen time. By bedtime, you may experience burning eyes, double or blurred vision, headaches or neck and shoulder pain—all symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome. Also referred to as Digital Eye Strain, Computer Vision Syndrome is a group of eye discomfort issues and vision problems that result from prolonged digital screen use. It can be diagnosed through a comprehensive eye examination. The symptoms may be caused by issues such as poor lighting, screen glare, uncorrected vision problems or improper desk configurations.
Read more about Computer Vision Syndrome in this post from UnitedHealthcare.
By Staff
Thursday, March 28, 2019 4:58 PM
The more likes the better, right? Not necessarily. The practice of buying likes or followers on social media can be detrimental to your social media marketing goals. The purpose of social media marketing is to spark action from your followers, whether that be engagement with your page or a visit to your storefront. When your followers are made of bots, it’s impossible to get a genuine reaction from these fraudulent accounts. Businesses, celebrities, and politicians alike can be guilty of purchasing fake followers on social media. The intention behind this trend is to appear as an authoritative figure in their industry and boost certain posts for sales, events, endorsements, etc. However, this deceptive trick can wreak havoc on your data collection, engagement rates, and, worst of all, your practice’s reputation. Need a little more convincing?
Read why you should definitely not buy fake followers or likes on social media in this post from iMatrix.
By Staff
Wednesday, March 27, 2019 3:02 PM
For many workers, health insurance is no longer what it once was. Health care costs borne by employees in the form of deductibles and coinsurance rose at a far faster rate than what employer-sponsored insurers paid for care between 2006 and 2016, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Even Medicare beneficiaries under the program’s current form (which includes private components and out-of-pocket spending) are expected to feel a bigger financial squeeze going forward. Under the current Medicare system, beneficiaries are on the hook for supplemental private insurance and out-of-pocket spending for certain services—and this spending is expected to increase significantly relative to what seniors receive from Social Security by 2030. Read more about rising health care costs in this
feature from Fortune.com.
By Staff
Tuesday, March 26, 2019 3:15 PM
Red, or bloodshot eyes are pretty common and often go away without treatment. However, they may be a result of a more serious condition. This
slideshow from WebMD covers a number of common (and not so common) eye conditions including watery, itchy eyes, odd-sized pupils and crossed eyes. This slideshow also includes a link to
Warning Signs of Eye Trouble.
By Staff
Monday, March 25, 2019 3:25 PM
Apple News is getting into the subscription business. At
Monday's Apple event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, the company announced a new subscription service called Apple News Plus (or, Apple News+). Tim Cook positioned the service as a way to get access to magazines—as opposed to just articles from news outlets—with just one subscription. Pay $9.99 a month and you'll get access to over 300 magazines covering topics like entertainment, news, fashion and more. "I miss the feeling of being at the newsstand," Tim Cook said, seemingly forgetting that Apple devices helped make buying physical magazines obsolete.
Read more about the Apple announcement in this feature from Mashable.
By Staff
Saturday, March 23, 2019 12:55 PM
Dragging yourself through the doldrums of a tedious workday may get the job done, but how effectively? Now you can break the tedium and actually increase your happiness, productivity, and focus, according to new neuroscience research. These recent studies show that there's a simple, playful way to boost your ebbing energy, and the answer is not what you'd expect. If you're looking for a way to perk up your workday and get more done, you may be able to do just that by gazing into the big brown eyes of a puppy. According to a study done by the Virginia Commonwealth University, a little bout of puppy love reduces the stress-response hormone cortisol, which is essential for us to be able to learn and perform effectively. Read more at
Inc.
By Staff
Friday, March 22, 2019 7:42 PM
Today as we celebrate
World Optometry Day, we encourage you to pause to reflect on the fact that optometry, as a profession, is very young in many global locations emerging more rapidly over the last 10 to 15 years. The scarcity of trained eyecare professionals in emerging nations and how that inequity directly contributes to disadvantaged lives and a critical loss to the overall economy, cannot be underestimated. “Our online Academy learning platform has enabled us to bring together faculty from 17 schools across 12 countries to learn together, and work through innovative evidence-based concepts and strategies for learning and teaching optometry. Over the program we have seen a strong community of optometry faculty form and grow through the online discussions and conferences enabling sharing and learning from each other,” said Judith Stern, Director of Academy, Brien Holden Vision Institute Foundation. Read more at
iapb.org.
By Staff
Thursday, March 21, 2019 7:32 PM
Sjögren’s (“SHOW-grins”) is a systemic autoimmune disease that affects the entire body. Along with symptoms of extensive dryness, other serious complications include profound fatigue, chronic pain, major organ involvement, neuropathies, and lymphomas. Although many patients experience dry eyes, dry mouth, fatigue and joint pain, Sjögren’s can also cause dysfunction of organs such as the kidneys, gastrointestinal system, blood vessels, lungs, liver, pancreas, and the central nervous system. Patients also have a higher risk of developing lymphoma. Today, as many as four million Americans are living with this disease. Read more from
sjogrens.org.