The Background - Artificial Human Sensors: Science and Applications - page 7

As argued, the presented research findings indicate a strong relationship ex-
hibiting differences between regional studies in adult populations. By adding the
obvious differences in ethnical and age related differences, this fact indicates that
we will probably end up with a massive visual impairment of the population.
However, in population studies between children or young adults there seems to
be a difference between males and females in the literature, but more illustrative
is an indication that this effect may also be affected by choice of education during
the student period of life.
These findings can be argued to relate to the social habits of today. The use
of near-vision abilities has dramatically increased at the sacrifice of the use of
the vision sense for long distances. This is an obvious change in human per-
ceptual degradation, that exhibits a long-term process along with the changing
social trends in decreased amount of exacting activities, will force the process fur-
ther. The young generation of today experiences a situation where individuals
actually are living in a near-vision daily life. In a general aspect, a normal day
of living in a big city may comprise many components of near-visual activities,
for example reading in school, playing virtual games and watching television
with many hundreds of channels, movies and music videos played in the mobile
phones. The young generation does not in general and on a regularly basis use the
long-distance vision capability. The scenario of future generations will probably be
to cause the evolution to make the human adaptation to fade out the long distance
capability and change the focus of vision to more active near-vision ability.
The visual impairment may be exhibiting an influencing factor in the increased
aspect, when spending constantly more time in bounded environments, e.g.,
home, school, shopping centres, etc. Rose (2008) has presented a study that sup-
ports this association, namely to assess the state between the relationship of near,
mid-working distance and outdoor activities with prevalence of myopia in school-
aged children. The conclusion made was when more time is spent outdoors, other
than for sports activities, was associated with less myopia. Further, Ip (2008) re-
ported that in a population-based sample of 12-year-old Australian schoolchildren,
myopia was not significantly associated with time spent in near work after ad-
justments of other factors, but there were significant independent associations re-
ported with close reading distance and continuous reading. The conclusion made
in the article suggested that these associations indicate that the intensity, rather
than the total duration of near work, is an important factor. This may indicate
that children often being outdoors, more frequently focus on long distant objects
compared to their indoor friends may also use their perceptual visual sensing in a
more balanced manner, when using the vision sensing system.
The conclusion made from these academic studies may indicate that the inten-
sity of near work will increase myopia and visual acuity. However, the result may
be more balanced and associated with increasing outdoor activities. Further, it can
be found in the literature, indications that a population study shows that univer-
sity students have an increased risk of myopia than non-students, Risovic (2008).
Also in the study, Quek (2008), a 73.9 % prevalence of myopia was found in a group