h a l f b a k e r yThe leaning tower of Piezo
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A jellyfish is an invertebrate made up mostly of water, it has
no heart, brain or bones. It is made up of 95-97% water, 3%
protein and 1% minerals.
Polymers are plastics that contain nitrogen and dissolve in
water. Soft contact lenses are made of crosslinked
polyacrylamide, which actually
absorbs water, (will not
dissolve) so it's a good material for contact lenses.
Anywhere
from 38% to 79% of a soft contact lens is water, and the
water
keeps the lens soft and flexible. Over 75% of contact lens
wearers in the U.S. use soft lenses.
Jellyfish don't have eyes like we know them, though some
medusae have ocelli which are light-sensitive spots on the
rim
of the bell.
Jellyfish do have sensory organs called rhopalia, which form
a
row of small round structures along the rim of the bell. The
rhopalia include sensory organs called statocysts that help
maintain the jellyfish's balance. When a jellyfish tips too far
to
one side, the statocyst will stimulate nerve endings that
cause
muscles to contract, turning the jellyfish right side up.
OK, so if you take your soft contact lens and play with it,
you'll notice that this polyacrylamide feels very similar to
jellyfish flesh. However, if you've ever tried to swim with
your
contacts, and open your eyes under water, there are
problems. A contact lens made from a slice of jellyfish would
not only solve this problem, but it would probably offer
some
sort of aqueous bonus, being perhaps that the wearer of
said
contact could see great distances under water, and hidden,
normally invisible things as well. (invisible to land creatures).
I
am confident that this would work well because of the
similarity of polyacrylamide and jellyfish.
Additionally, those wealthier myopics could opt to have
their
contacts made of slices of statocysts, which would not only
improve vision above and below the deep, but also could
serve
the same purpose that they do in jellyfish, which would be
to
cause your eye muscles to contract whenever you get
turned
upside down! The benefits of this ability are being
researched
as I type this.
(?) Greenbrolly's link - A picture of jellyfish
http://www.masla.co...ges/jellyfish01.gif
[green_umbrella], if you wish to add a link, please us the "link" button that appears under the text of each idea. [my face your, Oct 04 2004]
Lenses from Brittle Stars
http://news.bbc.co....hnology/2562093.stm
This idea is not as half-baked as you might think ... [8th of 7, Oct 04 2004]
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i think this is a marvellous idea, but one possible drawback: |
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the slices of jellyfish would have to be completely transparent in order to see clearly, and when i imagine jellyfish slices they're slightly cloudy. |
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i wonder if there exists some sort of procedure to make them as transparent as they need to be. |
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or if my imagination is lying to me, and that jellyfish ARE in fact, completely transparent. |
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I think the cloudiness is just salinification. (Think road salt
on your car's windshield from the highway in winter.) The
ocean carries a lot of bacteria as well, so before the
contacts are worn they would obviously have to go
through a disinfecting process which would also remove
the salt from the jellyfish surface thereby making them
transparent once again. |
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Another possible thing to do is use baby jellyfish, which
are called planula. Planula are tiny discs with a garden of
cilia on their bottom - the cilia could cling to the wearer's
eye, and no jellyfish death or maiming would have to
occur, because they come in eye-size. |
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http://www.masla.com/images/jellyfish01.gif |
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They look like contacts, don't they?? |
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Because your soft contact lenses are half- to three-quarters water, if you leave one out on your bathroom counter and go to work, you will go home to find it has become a crunchy little piece of plastic. |
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This said, if jellyfish are 98% water, doesn't it seem that the things would dry out, even on a semi-moist environment like your eye, in no time? |
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How long does a jellyfish actually stay "jelly", once it's washed up on shore? I'm not sure, but I don't guess very long, and I bet smaller, planula-sized bits of material will last for even briefer amounts of time. |
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Furthermore, I'd venture to guess that its body chemistry would have something to do with the fact that the jellyfish doesn't dessicate in such a salt-heavy environment (similar to why freshwater fish can't survive in the ocean and vice versa) -- what would happen when you started wearing jellyfish contacts outside the confines of the murky deep? I'd think that would only accelerate the cellular decay. I'm not a scientist, but I don't figure that jellyfish contact lenses would last you very long at all -- you'd spend all day changing them. |
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On the contrary, I would figure that they'd last longer
than regular soft contact lenses, because more water =
more time to evaporate. |
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The cellular decay on the other hand, is a different issue.
To plan for this, you would have to follow similar
guidelines to those of blood and/or organ donors,
specifically you would have to find a type match. If this is
unfeasible, an enzyme could be developed that could be
injected into your eye when you're first fitted with the
lenses that would turn your eye into s symbiotic
environment for the jellyfish slice. (like a fetus in a yolk-
the lens would stay healthy by getting nutrients from your
eye. An added side-effect of this would be that you would
no longer get eye mucus in the morning. The lens would
use this substance as sustenance.) |
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But what would this do the price of contact lenses!? |
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Pleasant, well no of course not. But I remember having
braces and that was pretty miserable. |
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Now I have straight teeth. |
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[Blissmiss], simple. The orphaned jellies go on to become
fierce, vengeance-bent grown up jellies who band
together into massive herds and advance upon the
unwitting shoreline community, which as we all know is
made up of rich Connecticutians who support the
ludicrous notion of 'private shoreline', and as everyone
knows, the world's shoreline should exist for the public to
enjoy. |
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See, this idea is socially conscious as well as scientifically
evolutionary! |
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No jellies allowed in my eyes, thank you. Blech! |
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You could always use the common cannonball jellyfish,
which has no tentacles (and does not sting). |
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Perhaps a solution to getting bacteria trapped beneath
the jellyfish contact would be to have them genetically
infused with your cornea, like the subject header says.
This way, there would be no space beneath them for
bacteria to enter or get trapped, and instead of seeing
them as contacts, you could consider this optical surgery,
much like corrective laser surgery only with extra-special
benefits. |
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PS - not a diver, just an enthusiast. :) |
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Aren't jellyfish poisonous somehow? |
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My contacts can't swim very well. |
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I would imagine that a dead jellyfish would rot just like anything else. |
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By the time you've kept immune response from occurring, shaped the jellyfish just right, kept it from decaying, etc., you might as well get Lasik. |
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wouldnt the jelly fish decay or would you just freeze them somehow? |
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It would absolutely not decay, as it would continue to
draw nourishment from the eyeball mucus (assuming there
is either a type match, or the eyeball has been injected
with the special enzyme I mentioned above.) |
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This makes about as much sense as wearing a wolverine on your head to cover a bald spot. Fishbone. |
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// This makes about as much sense as wearing a wolverine on your head to cover a bald spot // |
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Oh. Ah. You mean I souldn't have this wolverine on my head, then ? |
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As to the idea - there is more merit in it than some of the annotators give it credit for. |
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It's the wolverine that I feel sorry for. |
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[8th of 7], that's an awesome link. I would like to see them
go into more detail about the actual lenses of the brittle
star, and not just the potential. But I guess that would be
in a science journal soon enough. |
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Hmmmm, interesting idea...*strokes chin thoughtfully* |
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Ok, here is the killer on the jellyfish contact lens idea. Osmotic Pressure. Jellyfish have more water, the human eye has less. Water is going to leave the jellyfish contact and gravitate to the eye. The contact will adhere to the corneal surface so tightly because of this that it will be very, very, very, very, very, (not just very very very very) difficult to remove them. DISCLAIMER: DO NOT TRY THE FOLLOWING AT HOME. Sometimes contact lens wearers shower with their contact on and let water run continously into their eyes. 15 minutes later they go to take their contact lens out, but it has adhered (due to osmotic pressure) so tightly that they end up peeling a bit of cornea off in the process and get to enjoy a nice trip to the emergency room. So to summarize: Jellyfish contacts= ouch. |
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Genius. Pure bloody genius. I can only assume that the avalanche of croissants were washed away in the Great Crash. |
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quite right but I may need to take in the detail in the morning. jellyfish sting would that be a problem? |
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Hang on, this is silly. One, a jellyfish-slice
contact lens would rot and you'd have
smelly eyes. Two, why on earth would
jellyfish-slice lenses be any more likely
than regular lenses to not wash away when
you swim? |
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This is the most wonderfully silly thing I've read in a long time. |
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// but it would probably offer some sort of aqueous bonus // Ah, the spiderman theory. You'd probably be able to squeeze through really small gaps too. |
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Interesting idea. Now we just have to worry about the ensuing Jellyfish insurrection, taking over their hosts, and conquering the world! Actually, could be a plot for a cheesy sci-fi movie... |
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//Jellyfish Contact Lenses// |
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Do you think that Jellyfish need to see where they are going? |
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Jellyfish really freakin hurt, and that's when it just stings your leg. Can't quite imagine why it would be a good idea to put one in your eye. |
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I would not want to put anything containing nematocysts on my eyes. |
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That said, have your studies discussed the benefits of the symbiotic algae species that live inside the bell of jellyfish? |
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Something looks decidedly fishy about this whole idea. |
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