{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.015525579027742428, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003054212267752609, 'mean_word_length': 5.140625, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Winners in the 2002 Naylor Prize competition

With the passage of time, the demands made on the knowledge and skill of members of the optometric profession are steadily increasing. While this is reflected in the growing content of the core optometry degree courses, project or dissertation work provides a valuable additional opportunity for students to enlarge their knowledge of particular areas of optometry and visual science, to develop the critical skills required to evaluate relevant new research and, perhaps, to contribute themselves to the progress of their chosen profession. The Naylor Prize, instituted in memory of Dr Jon Naylor, one of the founding fathers of UMIST’s degree course, is designed to encourage work in this area. First Prize in the 2002 Competition went to Claire Donald, of Glasgow Caledonian University, for her report The lissamine green stain: what is it highlighting on the palpebral conjunctiva? This was an interesting and careful exploration of the use of lissamine green to identify Marx’s line on the superior conjunctiva and to relate its appearance to the sex, age and symptoms of some 40 subjects. Although no strong correlations were found, the study provides a valuable baseline for further work in this area, which may prove useful in relation to dry eye patients. A Cardiff student, Debbie Wiggins, was awarded second prize for her project report The effect of eye position in the orbit on the characteristics of congenital nystagmus . Although only a small fraction of patients suffer from this condition, it creates real problems for those involved. A fuller description of its characteristics may be helpful both in relation to the problems of the individuals concerned and in helping us to understand both normal and abnormal eye movements. Using infrared limbal tracking, the study was able to confirm earlier reports that most congenital nystagmus patients have a gaze direction in which the intensity of the eyes oscillation is minimal. The waveform of the oscillation was found to change in this gaze direction in such a way as to increase foveation time and hence improve acuity. Another Glasgow student, Mhairi Day, received the third prize for her project Electrophysiology of change blindness . Change blindness is the phenomenon in which, under some circumstances, surprisingly large changes in the visual world can occur without being detected by an observer. Examples are changes occurring during a saccade, a film cut, image flicker or the presence of a brief distracting stimulus. The effects have obvious practical significance, for example to the driving situation. The study attempted to determine whether there were differences in the electrophysiological responses obtained when a change was detected and when change blindness occurred. In particular, the hope was to clarify whether change might be detected at a lower level by the visual system, yet fail to be perceived. Although subtle differences were found in the event-related potentials, the study failed to fully confirm that implicit recognition could occur. Nevertheless it produced a good deal of information on this intriguing topic and helped to clear the stage for further work. The final prize was awarded to Andrew Preston, of Bradford University, for his dissertation Should children’s visual screening continue in the UK? . This is a contentious issue on which many practitioners hold strong views. Andrew presented a thoughtful review of available screening methods and their applicability at various age levels in relation to the visual problems to be identified. All told, the broad spectrum of entries from the various teaching departments gave encouraging evidence that today’s students are being well prepared to actively participate in the development of 21st century optometry. Undoubtedly many of the undergraduate projects will form the basis of further work at postgraduate level.