Return of the Sight

The Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment yesterday to give limited vision to people who are blind, involving a technology called the artificial retina. The device allows people with a certain type of blindness to detect crosswalks on the street, the presence of people or cars, and sometimes even large numbers or letters. The approval of the system marks a milestone in a new frontier in vision research, a field in which scientists are making strides with gene therapy, optogenetics, stem cells, and other strategies. That is clearly one breakthrough of a device, but there is more to blog about tonight: the much-rumored iPhone 5S and a 5-inch iPhone 6 have shown up at an Apple supplier in China, according to a post on a Chinese microblogging site. The models could be released this year, according to a post by a Sina Tech user called Old Yao. He reports that a friend of his at a supplier has seen the models and says that the iPhone 5S resembles the iPhone 5, while the iPhone 6 is wider, longer, and thinner.