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Sherwin-Williams (SHW) shares rose Tuesday after the paint maker posted better-than-forecast second-quarter adjusted profit on higher residential sales. The paint maker also raised its 2024 profit outlook.

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.70 jumped 12.5% year-over-year and beat the $3.46 consensus estimate of analysts polled by Visible Alpha. However, revenue of $6.27 billion was up less than 1% and trailed expectations of $6.33 billion.

The company raised its full-year outlook for both EPS and adjusted EPS. EPS for 2024 is now seen between $10.30 and $10.60, up from April's guidance of $10.05 to $10.55, while adjusted EPS projections were revised up to a range of $11.10 to $11.40 from $10.85 to $11.35.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Heidi Petz said residential sales were driving demand for the company's paint products, although "General Industrial demand was soft in all regions."

"We are clearly seeing a return on last year’s growth investments in residential repaint, where volume increased by a mid-single digit percentage in a down market," Petz said. "We’re also encouraged by growth in new residential, where we expect continued momentum over the back half of the year."

Sherwin-Williams shares were 3.3% higher at $333.02 as of 10:18 a.m. ET Tuesday. They have gained about 7% this year.

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Source: Harvard Health Publishing

Embryo donation — the process by which a family donates their "extra" embryos to a couple or individual — is a viable path to parenthood. In a previous blog post, I addressed some of the reasons why people who consider their families complete after in vitro fertilization (IVF) might choose to donate embryos.

Who, then, is on the receiving end? Often, this option interests people considering adoption, and individuals or couples who need donated eggs or sperm, or both, to achieve pregnancy. If you find yourself in one of these groups, here are some initial questions and issues you might consider as you make your decision.

Embryo donation or adoption: A few points to compare

Pregnancy. The opportunity to experience pregnancy draws some prospective adoptive parents to seek embryo donation. This may be important to you. It may be a life experience you always looked forward to, or hoped to share with a spouse or partner. Or perhaps you are concerned about having someone else carry your baby. For example, prospective adoptive parents often worry that their future child could be affected before birth by a birth mother's choices around drugs and alcohol, or exposures to unavoidable stresses.

Time frame and cost. The pandemic fueled already significant declines in the number of babies placed for adoption. If you are seeking to adopt a newborn, you are likely to face a wait of two years or more. By contrast, embryos are available, and an embryo transfer often occurs within six months of making the decision to seek donated embryos.

The cost of embryo donation is considerably less than adoption. If you go through an agency there will be a fee, as well as costs related to moving embryos from one clinic to another and (depending on your medical insurance) costs associated with medications and with the embryo transfer. While costs are substantial and vary across the US, fees are much higher for infant adoption than for embryo donation.

Although the short wait and lower costs are attractive when comparing embryo donation to adoption, it is important to know that embryo donation does not always result in a live birth, while adoption — with a reputable agency — will bring a baby into your home.

Your child's story. All of us want our children to feel good about their origin stories. Adoptive families have long recognized that some adoptees have enduring feelings of loss because their birth parents chose to make an adoption plan. Some people believe embryo donation mitigates these losses because the child is born into the family they will be raised in. However, others see it differently: they feel that embryo donation brings with it a more complicated origin story. How will a child make sense of the fact that they began as an embryo created by people longing for a baby, but an embryologist chose another embryo for transfer, making them "extra"? Might this lead to a greater sense of displacement, and perhaps to feeling like a bit of a science experiment?

Choosing family backgrounds. If you pursue adoption, you'll weigh in on the race of your child. You may be able to request birth parents who avoided drugs or alcohol during the pregnancy and/or have family histories free of serious physical or mental health problems. You will not be able to narrow your match to people you like or feel are compatible, people who feel familiar, and whose interests and values align with yours.

If you pursue embryo donation, you and the donor family get to choose each other. Before anyone makes a commitment, you can confirm with the donor family that you have a shared perspective of how much contact you want to have, and what each of you believes is in the best interest of the children involved. Decisions tend to feel more collaborative than in adoption, where it may feel like "birth parents get to make all the decisions."

Embryo donation or egg or sperm donation: A few points to compare

If you are in a position to need sperm or egg donation, or both, you might be comparing this with embryo donation as a path to pregnancy. Below are key points to consider, and some questions that may arise as you sort through your options.

Since pregnancy is your primary goal here, you are probably thinking about which option is likely to work best. With embryo donation, one might say you get a head start, since you begin with healthy embryos. However, the number of embryos you receive will be limited.

You could decide to seek a second donor family if you don't achieve pregnancy with embryos from the first donor, although this would be a long, discouraging path. By contrast, if you seek donated sperm and eggs separately and begin with a large number of eggs, you may have a larger number of embryos to work with.

Time frame and cost. The good news is that each of these options can be available to you without delay. You can obtain donor sperm from a donor known to you, or from major cryobanks within days of choosing a donor. If you choose frozen eggs, these can be secured quickly also. Donated embryos take longer to locate and arrange for their transfer from one family to another.

Your medical insurance will play a big role in determining the expenses associated with each option. Sperm from a known donor usually is free. With egg and sperm donation from a cryobank, you will owe a fee to the donors. In the case of egg donors, fees can be high. With embryo donation, no fee is paid to the donating family.

Your child's story. If you opt for embryo donation, your child's story began with another family planning to have a baby. You may wonder if your child will have feelings of displacement similar to what some adoptees report. Or, carrying and giving birth to your baby may make embryo donation feel fundamentally different from adoption. Double donation — conceiving a child with both donated eggs and sperm — also offers the connection that comes with pregnancy, although you may wonder how your child will make sense of being conceived by two people who never knew each other. A single donation of either egg or sperm offers a genetic connection to one parent, which some feel helps root a child in the family. Yet each of these origin stories is complicated, making it essential that you feel comfortable with the story before you move forward. Long before being able to understand the story, your child can sense that you feel secure in the rightness of your decision.

Decisions like these abound worldwide

If you are taking a serious look at embryo donation and comparing it to other parenthood options available to you, you are not alone. The arrival of IVF in 1978 has led to a series of new paths to parenthood. Each one drew pioneers who took a careful look before moving forward into new and unfamiliar territory. Making the decision with patience, thoughtfulness, and information has enabled them to embrace and celebrate the families that they have built.

For more information

Regulations, rules, and costs of different paths to parenthood vary by state and other factors. These resources may help you track down information you need to make a decision.

Resolve

Source: Harvard Health Publishing

Animals renowned for their outstanding night vision include owls, cats, tarsiers (a tiny primate in Southeast Asia) — and even the dung beetle.

But humans? Not so much.

Over time, many people suffer from night blindness, also known as nyctalopia. This condition makes seeing in dim or dark settings difficult because your eyes cannot adjust to changes in brightness or detect light.

What are the dangers for those experiencing night blindness?

Night blindness is especially problematic and dangerous when driving. Your eyes cannot adjust between darkness and the headlights of oncoming vehicles, other cars may appear out of focus, and your depth perception becomes impaired, which makes it difficult to judge distances.

Night blindness also may affect your sight at home by making it hard for your vision to quickly adjust to a dark room after turning off the lights. "This can cause people to bump into furniture or trip and suffer an injury," says Dr. Isabel Deakins, an optometrist with Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

What happens in the eye to create night blindness?

The ability to see in low-light conditions involves two structures in the eye: the retina and the iris.

The retina, located in the back of the eye, contains two types of light-detecting cells called cones and rods. The cones handle color vision and fine details while the rods manage vision in dim light.

The iris is the colored part of your eye. It contains muscles that widen or narrow the opening of your pupil to adjust how much light can enter your eyes.

If your irises don't properly react, the pupils can dilate and let in too much light, which causes light sensitivity and makes it hard to see in bright light. Or your pupils may remain too small and not allow in enough light, making it tough to see in low light.

What causes night blindness?

Night blindness is not a disease but a symptom of other conditions. "It's like having a bruise on your body. Something else causes it," says Dr. Deakins.

Several conditions can cause night blindness. For instance, medications, such as antidepressants, antihistamines, and antipsychotics, can affect pupil size and how much light enters the eye.

Eye conditions that can cause night blindness include:

However, one issue that raises the risk of night blindness that you can't control is age. "Our eyes react more slowly to light changes as we age, and vision naturally declines over time," says Dr. Deakins.  "The number of rods in our eyes diminish, pupils get smaller, and the muscles of the irises weaken."

What helps if you have night blindness?

If you notice any signs of night blindness, avoid driving and get checked by an eye care specialist like an optometrist or ophthalmologist. An eye exam can determine if your eyeglass prescription needs to be updated.

"Often, a prescription change is enough to reduce glare when driving at night," says Dr. Deakins. "You may even need separate glasses with a stronger eye prescription that you wear only when driving at night."

Adding an anti-reflective coating to your lens may help to cut down on the glare of the headlights of an oncoming car. However, skip the over-the-counter polarized driving glasses sold at many drug stores. "These may help cut down on glare, but they don't address the causes of night blindness," says Dr. Deakins.

An eye exam also will identify glaucoma or cataracts, which can be treated. Glaucoma treatments include eyedrops, laser treatment, or surgery. Cataracts are corrected with surgery to replace the clouded lens with an artificial one. Your eye care specialist can also help identify dry eye and recommend treatment.

Ask your primary care clinician or a pharmacist if any medications that you take may cause night blindness. If so, it may be possible to adjust the dose or switch to another drug.

Three more ways to make night driving safer

You also can take steps to make night driving safer. For example:

Source: Harvard Health Publishing

Shares in NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXPI) fell sharply ahead of Tuesday’s opening bell after the Dutch-based chipmaker issued a weaker-than-expected current quarter outlook amid a slowdown in spending by automotive customers and rising geopolitical risks.

The company guided third-quarter net sales between $3.15 billion and $3.35 billion, with the high end of that forecast falling short of the $3.36 billion expected by analysts. It sees adjusted earnings in the period of $3.42 per share at the midpoint, missing the Street estimate of $3.61 a share.

For the three-month period ending June 30, sales in the chipmaker’s automotive segment contracted 7% from a year earlier to $1.73 billion, recording its largest quarterly revenue decline in more than three years, as customers in auto end markets reined in spending due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Like other chipmakers, NXP also faces increasing geopolitical risks from Beijing’s volatile trade relations with Washington and Brussels, with tightening export curbs potentially slowing the company’s sales to China, a country that represented around 33% of NXP’s total revenue last year.

The chipmaker’s share price has oscillated within a rising wedge over the past twelve months helping to establish easily identifiable support and resistance areas. This well-known pattern, consisting of two upward-sloping converging trendlines, typically occurs after an uptrend and signals a potential reversal in a security's price.

Interestingly, share turnover has increased in recent trading sessions, possibly indicating market participants expect post-earnings volatility. Indeed, the stock sits poised to open sharply lower Tuesday, bringing the lower portion of the rising wedge pattern into play.

NXP shares were down 7.9% at $261.38 in recent premarket trading.

Looking ahead, investors should monitor the $248 level, an area on the chart where the price will likely find support from the wedge’s lower trendline. It’s also worth pointing out that there will be a greater chance of the stock resuming its longer-term uptrend from this level if the relative strength index (RSI) flashes an oversold reading below 30 at the same time.

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