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About 12 million Americans are colorblind. Worldwide, one in 12 men and one in 200 women are colorblind. That works out to 360 million people who are colorblind around the world.

The term "colorblind" can be misleading. Most colorblind people can see many colors but not as broad as others. It is extremely rare to see in black and white only.

If colorblindness is so common, what causes it? And do people who are colorblind just learn to adapt, can they be treated or cured?

With us on The Spark Wednesday was Dr. William Smith, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Director of the Low Vision Service at UPMC, who told us,"There's three different types, there's red green color deficiency, which is the inability to detect the difference between red and green. There's blue and yellow, which means that blue people have a hard time telling blue and green apart and red and yellow, and then obviously the complete blindness. But even with in the red, green and blue yellow, it would be it would be their classifications like mild, moderate and severe. So even within that, there's different expression of the of the ability to detect color."

Colorblindness can't be cured can Dr. Smith said it can be treated,"For many years we've used a red tinted contact lens in the patient non-dominant eye, which helped change the wavelength. So it just help people be able to kind of discriminate the differences between between red and green, for instance, on a traffic light in that same vein. There were also tinted glasses that were usually tinted, a magenta color. And again, it kind of distorts how the light goes back to the eye and allows people to keep note the change between the colors. And then most recently there were lenses and glasses called in chroma lenses, which really increased the separation between the colors of the light. And then people were able to see colors more vibrantly, clearly and distinctly. So I would say that in chroma glasses would probably be closest to. Detect to be able to see color more naturally where the other devices are. Really the other options are just really trying to get a discrimination between to two separate colors.?

 
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On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam near Johnstown, Pennsylvania collapsed and the devastating release of water killed more than 22 hundred people.

As a result, May 31st is remembered and recognized as National Dam Safety Awareness Day.

National Dam Safety Awareness Day seeks to encourage and promote individual and community responsibility and best practices for dam safety, as well as what steps can be taken to prevent catastrophic dam failures.

Pennsylvania has more than 3,400 dams and over a thousand of them are at least a hundred years old.

In its 2022 Infrastructure Report Card, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave Pennsylvania dams a "C" grade. The report said 54% of the state's dams are "high hazard."

On The Spark Wednesday,  Kirk Kreider, Chief, Division of Dam Safety,for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said high hazard doesn't mean dangerous,"It's not a assessment of condition. It's really if a dam were to fail for whatever reason, whether it's perfectly in fine condition or not, what happens? And if the answer to that question is if it fails and it hits habitable structures, people's homes, businesses, things like that, and causes a life, a likely loss of life, that's that's the definition of high hazard."

Duke Adams, Water Program Specialist, in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Bureau of Waterways Engineering and Wetlands said there are Emergency Action Plans for dams,"Emergency action plan is A, it's that it sits on a shelf and it's there to pull off. If there is something going wrong at the dam, they have trigger elevations in there. So during heavy rain events or if there's a known issue at a dam, we're going to ask an owner to be super diligent and watch what's going on. And if the water level over their spillway starts to reach a trigger elevation, they're going to call 911 and they're going to put their county emergency management on on notice that, hey, we have an issue here and we'll keep you posted. And then if it reaches the next elevation, then it's, hey, pull that plan. Let's get let's get roads closed. Let's get people evacuated. Let's get people out of harm's way."

Adams added that dams are being inspected all the time and when there is an issue with a dam, the owner is made aware to get it fixed.
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Scientists believe an El Nino could develop over the next two months. El Niño is a climate pattern that is caused by changes to ocean currents in the eastern Pacific Ocean but has national and international impacts. During changes in ocean currents, the warmer waters cause the Pacific jet stream to move south of its neutral position.

What impact could El Nino have on Central Pennsylvania's weather and around the world?

On The Spark Tuesday was ABC27 meteorologist Dan Tomaso, who indicated El Nino could mean a hot, dry summer for Central Pennsylvania,"What's a little bit of alarming and perhaps our listeners have noticed this, the extremely dry weather we've had so far for May, we will likely close out May as the driest May on record for the Harrisburg region that goes back to records set back in 1888. So that already is somewhat concerning. If we do have a suppressed hurricane season, which a lot of scientists believe is linked to El Nino, we could be in trouble rain wise. Heading into the summer. And the reason I say that is usually in the summertime we rely on thunderstorms for rain, which tend to be sporadic and scattered in nature. But also we rely on tropical systems. So if you want rain, if you are a farmer, if you are a gardener, I would almost root for these warmer Atlantic waters to win out. And we actually do get some travel activity because then we may actually nip into this deficit of rain that we have so far. We did pretty well at the end of April. Then everything shut off in terms of rain here in central P-A. So the uncertainty lies in how much rain we will see this summer. And if you haven't noticed to the last couple of days, last week here in central P-A., the air has been so dry, there's no humidity and so temperatures easily get into the upper seventies, low eighties, and we're not even into June yet. So it could be a hot and dry summer here locally if El Nino winds out the weather pattern. So that has our alarm bells up a little bit."

Tomaso said El Nino usually means more snow for Central Pennsylvania. He added the southeastern part of the U.S. could be in for more rainfall if El Nino develops.
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Our guest on The Spark Tuesday says he writes weird stories.

Cliff Lewis’ debut novel is called We The Future and it’s about an asthmatic boy, Jonah, who is worried about his future as the climate is changing and is thrown a lifeline from Sunny, a girl visiting from the future. Along the way Jonah is tasked with recruiting 600 of his classmates to fight climate change.

Cliff Lewis talked about his inspiration for writing the book,"I had an experience a few years ago in my community that really changed my life and changed the lives of a lot of people in our town in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There was a congressional campaign and my family volunteered to get involved, and we were using our house as a staging location and as a little bit of backup support. The campaign sent this crew of young climate activists from a group called the Sunrise Movement. They came to our house. They helped us run the operation. And it was meeting these young activists that completely reshaped my understanding of the crisis and what people can do about it. They worked with such incredible urgency like like not like a workaholic that can't pull themselves away from their smartphone, but like like a first responder on their way to a four alarm fire. And it was that urgency that I saw in their eyes and the sense of community and camaraderie that they had all the while that really lit the spark that led to what is now this book called We The Future."

Lewis said the book is geared middle-school aged kids," I was listening to an interview actually with the author David Wallace-Wells, who wrote an excellent book called The Uninhabitable Earth, which is exploring worst case scenarios around the climate crisis. And in that interview, he said, We have so few stories. Even though climate crisis is arguably the defining historical event of this century, we have so few stories and so few examples of popular storytelling that really directly tackle this subject. We've got a lot of popular storytelling that tangentially addresses it or metaphorically addresses it, but what about stories that directly address it? And he was saying there is there's a dearth of that. And as a writer myself and a creative person, it was like I felt this the calling come upon me in that moment and the spark of that idea sort of lit in that moment. And I thought, I can do this. I can write a story. And more specifically, yeah, I can write a story for young readers. That's just something I've always had a passion to do, is to is to communicate with young people."

Jonah is the main character in the story but Sunny, the girl from the future, has a big impact on Jonah and what he has to do to fight climate change,"He's tried to strip his life of anything that grows his carbon footprint and he's trying to basically tackle the climate crisis as a one kid army alone. And the big message that Sunny brings to Jonah at the opening of the story is only you can save the world, but you'll never do it alone. And she encourages him to network out, to build connections, to organize, and then build those friendships. Because it's not just about networking. Networking is when I say networking, it sounds very functional, very utilitarian. But what we're really talking about when you're organizing together with other people who are who are feeling the same passion that you are, who are facing the same fears that you are, that's not just a network, that those are friendships, and some of those friendships can last a lifetime. So, Jonah, at the beginning of the story is a very lonely kid. And through this journey of organizing and friend building and advocating for a better future, he finds with the help of Sunny the friendships that he had so desperately needed when the story began."
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The Pennsylvania Learning Investment Commission is holding the 2023 Early Learning Economic Summit June 6th in Harrisburg. The Commission says the event will highlight experts on investments for businesses and policymakers to make that will guarantee that working parents/caregivers can gain access to affordable, quality child care while also maintaining economic mobility, while still having a vibrant economy.

The importance of quality childcare emerged as a major issue during the COVID pandemic.

Many say childcare and early childhood education are essential to Pennsylvania’s economic future.

Joining us on The Spark Thursday were Andrea Heberlein, executive director of the PA Early Learning Investment Commission (PA ELIC) and Jim Hoehn, a member of ELIC and the Regional President, Central PA with PNC Bank.
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One in 36 Pennsylvania children and more than five million adults nationwide are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The court system can be daunting for anyone, but can be especially challenging for someone living with autism.

Autism Spectrum Disorder isn’t universally understood, including sometimes by judges and other court personnel.

Against that backdrop, the Pennsylvania Court System created The Autism and Courts Initiative a few years ago.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty is on a community education tour. Justice Kevin Dougherty was with us on The Spark Thursday.
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