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In Touch - Factsheet BBC Radio 4 |
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Tuesday 29 October 2002
Listen to the In Touch for 29 October CROATIAN BLIND THEATRE COMPANY Interview with Maria Oshodi and Liz Porter of Extant, the first professional blind arts company in Britain who organised the tour. The fifty year old New Life Theatre Company of blind actors from Zagreb, have taken a book of short stories by the Russian writer D.I.Harms and created a highly physical, absurdist piece, brimming over with energy and humour, that amounts to the most challenging and exciting piece of theatre by a company of visually impaired actors that has ever been staged. This will be a unique shared experience between the blind and sighted audience. For the first time ever a foreign language production will be supported with a simultaneous audio language and audio description facility. That means we all wear headphones providing a language translation, descriptions of visual action, sets and characters on stage. 8 and 9 November 2002 Lilian Baylis Theatre London Tel: 020 7863 8000 12 and 13 November 2002 Court Yard Theatre Hereford Tel: 01432 359 252 15 and 16 November 2002 Contact Theatre Manchester Tel: 0161 274 0600 19 November 2002 Nottingham Playhouse Tel: 0115 941 9419 EXTANT AND LONDON ARTS SEMINAR On 9 November in Sadler Wells Theatre in London between 1.30 and 5.30, EXTANT and London Arts run a seminar: ACCESS TO THE PERFORMING RIGHTS FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PERFORMERS AND AUDIENCE. If you are interested in attending it please phone IndiraSengupta on 020 8740 6835. CONTACTS EXTANT For further information on the company visit their website TURTLE KEY ARTS Ladbroke Hall 79 Barlby Road London W10 6AZ Tel: 020 8964 5060 email admin@turtlekeyarts.org.uk for further information, please note this is not for booking tickets. SAINSBURY'S The programme look at the Sainsbury's To You scheme - shopping for the visually impaired. Peter hears from listeners who have been trying to use the scheme and found it confusing. Sainsbury's To You is the only on-line ordering service that offers Braille Catalogues to disabled customers, plus a phone ordering service to all its customers, which no other competitor offers. CONTACTS SAINSBURY'S Customer Care Line 0845 301 2020 CHINESE FOOD Fiona Fox, director of Science Media Centre explains the recent scare over Chinese food and asks: how accurately are health and science issues being covered by the media? Eating too much monosodium glutamate (MSG) - the flavour enhancer common in oriental and processed foods - could damage people's eyesight, studies in animals suggest. Researchers at Hirosaki University, in Japan, say studies show that rats fed diets high in MSG suffer vision loss and have thinner retinas. Although the rats were fed unnaturally large amounts of MSG, researchers say lower levels may produce the same effects in humans over several decades. Glutamate is an amino acid that acts as a neurotransmitter and has already been shown to cause nerve damage in experiments where it is injected directly into the eye. Researcher Dr Hiroshi Ohguro says this is the first study to show that eye damage can be caused by eating food containing MSG, reports New Scientist. The study involved rats fed three different diets for six months, containing either high (20 per cent of the diet) amounts of MSG, moderate amounts, or none. Results showed that some retinal nerve layers in rats on the high-MSG diet thinned by as much as 75 per cent. Tests that measured retinal response to light also showed these rats had poorer eyesight. Rats on the moderate diet also had damage, but to a lesser extent. Researchers found high concentrations of MSG in the vitreous fluid, which bathes the retina. MSG binds to receptors on retinal cells, destroying them and causing secondary reactions that reduce the ability of the remaining cells to relay electrical signals, researchers explain. Dr Ohguro says that, although lesser amounts of MSG should be safe, "the precise borderline amount is still unknown". He adds that the findings may explain why, in eastern Asia, there is a high rate of normal-tension glaucoma - a form of the eye disease that leads to blindness without the usual increase in pressure inside the eyeball. The higher rate, however, could also be due to genetics. Professor Peng Tee Khaw, a glaucoma specialist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, in London, says the amounts of MSG in the highest diet are "a lot, lot higher than you'd eat". However, he adds that "sodium glutamate junkies" could potentially experience problems with their retinas. He said that lower dietary intakes could produce the same effects over several decades, which may explain why normal-tension glaucoma does not tend to occur until people reach their 40s. CONTACTS SCIENCE MEDIA CENTRE 21 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BS The Science Media Centre is an independent venture working to promote the voices, stories and views of the scientific community to the news media when science is in the headlines. Visit the In Touch Message Board Back to the In Touch page The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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