winners in the 2000 naylor prize competition

Winners in the 2000 Naylor Prize Competition Professor W. N. Charman The Naylor Prize Committee, Department of Optometry and Neuroscience, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK A substantial volume of third or fourth year project work is carried out in British undergraduate courses in Optometry, ranging from topics which are directly concerned with day- to-day clinical practice to those which explore the remoter areas of visual science. The 2000 Naylor Prize Competition, the 14th in the series instituted in memory of UMIST's much-loved Senior Lecturer, once again attracted a spec- trum of high-quality entries which re¯ected this broad range of activity. First prize went to Paulvinder Singh Cardiff University) for his sophisticated study `Collagen orientation and proteoglycan distribution in keratoconus'. While keratoconus has been recognised for more than 150 years, the cause or causes of the disease have yet to be fully determined, and understanding of the nature of the corneal changes contri- buting to cone development remains far from perfect. Using a combination of light and electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, Singh found previously-undiscovered changes in proteoglycan size and in the density and orientation of the collagen ®bres in the region of the cone. All told, his study nicely blended advanced methods of analysis with an appreciation of a signi®cant clinical problem. The clinically important topic of how to assess retinal function in cataract and similar patients was addressed by Patrick Quaid University of Bradford) in his report `The effects of dioptric blur on visual and vernier acuity, and its relation to retinal function in the presence of media opacities'. This report was awarded second prize. Quaid explored the optimal geometry of the vernier stimuli and was able to con®rm that, if retinal function is normal, vernier acuity is much more robust against both defocus and the scattering and absorbing effects of media opacities than is conven- tional visual acuity. His work represents a valuable step towards the goal of producing a routine clinical test. The technique is obviously well suited to presentation on the computer displays which must surely eventually take over from today's charts. Stephen Doolan's report City University), which was awarded the ®rst of two third prizes, discussed totally different subject material. Entitled `Investigations in the visual pigments of deep sea ®sh' it explores the way in which the pigments relate to the totally different condi- tions of the ocean depths. While such a subject may seem esoteric, a better understanding of visual pigment structure and function has obvious relevance to our own visual systems. Equal third prize went to Gillian Bruce Glasgow Cale- donian University) for her report `An investigation into the ef®cacy of Lea paddles and their detection of amblyopia'. Early detection of amblyopia is of great clinical importance so that any possible improvement on existing methods for its investigation deserves thorough exploration. Lea paddles are a variation on the acuity card procedure, being a series of gratings with different spatial frequencies which are mounted on what are effectively table tennis bats. The paddles are then presented behind one of two circular aper- tures in a blank screen, the other being occupied by a blank paddle of the same mean luminance. The aim is to assess preferential looking, to determine whether or not the young child can resolve the bars of the grating. Ms Bruce was able to demonstrate that, unfortunately, while they were easy to use the paddles did not possess any marked advantages over earlier tests and that they might, indeed, be less reliable than the broadly similar Keeler cards. As always, the judges found it dif®cult to separate these winning reports from many other excellent entries. It is to be hoped that the experience gained in this project work will encourage many of those involved to go on to make valuable contributions to the advancement of optometry and visual science in the future. 490 Ophthal. Physiol. Opt. Vol. 21, No. 6, p. 490, 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain www.elsevier.com/locate/ophopt PII: S0275-540801)00007-2 Received: 12 March 2001 Accepted: 12 March 2001 Correspondence and reprint requests to: Professor W.N. Charman. Tel.: 144-161-2363311; fax: 144-161-2287040. E-mail address: [email protected] P. W. N. Charman).

winners in the 2000 naylor prize competition

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