skin cancer: most effective ways of fighting skin cancer

firstly we should know that skin cancer is a skin disease that ranges in the areas of mild to the potentially more serious form of melanoma. This cancer is the #1 cancer type and each year more and more skin cancer is diagnosed, averaging over a million in the United States alone.

Because people are not as cautious about their skin as they are with other parts of their body, skin cancer often goes unrecognized at first. Individuals may not be as alarmed at changes in their skin's moles and growths, as they would be with other health abnormalities, such as persistent heartburn, increasing pain or blood in the stool.

Prevention is the key to avoiding skin cancer. Prevention is possible using a variety of key measures. By not implementing these measures you may increase your potential for developing any of the different types of skin cancer. A few simple changes to your lifestyle choices can greatly reduce your risk. Below are some of the preventative measures that will help to prevent skin cancer in the future.

Prevention measures:

The sun's rays help to make vitamin D in your body, so the sun is not necessarily a bad thing. Knowing how much and at what times to avoid the sun is what you should strive for. To avoid the most intensive UV rays attempt to stay out of the sun between 10 am and 4 pm. If you must be out in it, you would definitely benefit from covering up a little bit. Wear a hat with a wide brim to avoid sunlight on the facial areas and sunscreen to protect the face and the rest of the body.

Wear sunscreen daily on your hands and arms which receive sun exposure while driving. This will also help to reduce the appearance of sunspots and aging in your hands.

Wear sunscreen while working at the office if you work under UV lights. You might not realize that the daily exposure to the UV lights in the office can also increase your risk of skin cancer and also speed the appearance of aging to your skin.

Try to stay in the shade as much as possible. Wear sunscreen always, even on overcast days. You may be surprised to know that even then your skin is at risk. Select a sunscreen that is labeled SPF 15 or above. Your sunscreen will need to be applied approximately every 2 hours or so. Sunglasses will also provide protection for your face and the sensitive skin around the eyes.

Purchase sunglasses that block out 99% or more of the sun's UVB and UVA sunlight radiation. Do not pick sunglasses simply because you like the way you look in them. If you can, purchase sunglasses that will partially wrap around to the sides of your head.

Examine your skin often during showers or baths. Discovery of any new or unusual growths or changes early offer the best chances of a cure.

If you do notice any abnormal moles or growths on your body, consult with your physician immediately to obtain the earliest possible diagnosis of any form of possible skin cancer. Skin cancer prevention methods combined with early cancer detection would offer the greatest chance of recovery with prompt treatment.
read this: facts about photosynthesis that you never came across

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photosynthesis:how plants makes use of sunlight

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Plants use certain color pigments in order to convert light into energy by way of photosynthesis. They allow plants to gather light energy. This also works in a similar way for microbes, for instance cyanobacteria. The fact that a very large number of viruses are able to contribute towards pigment production has now been demonstrated by biologists from the University of Kaiserslautern with a colleague from Israel. The viruses introduce genetic material into the bacteria which then allows them to produce the pink-colored pigments. The study has now been published in the scientific journal Environmental Microbiology.

Cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) and other oceanic bacteria are able to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen with the help of sunlight, just like plants. "They use light-harvesting complexes in order to capture the energy from the light," says microbiology Professor Nicole Frankenberg-Dinkel from the University of Kaiserslautern. "These consist of proteins and color pigments." The latter are also responsible for the characteristic coloration. In the case of plants, for example, this is the green pigment 'chlorophyll', in cyanobacteria this is the blue pigment 'phycocyanobilin' and the pink pigment 'phycoerythrobilin'.
"The synthesis of these pigments is already well understood," the microbiologist adds. "So far researchers have only been able to demonstrate their presence in organisms which release oxygen through the process of photosynthesis." In addition to this form of conventional photosynthesis performed by plants and cyanobacteria, there are also other variants that do not release any oxygen.
The biologists at Kaiserslautern sought to investigate, together with their Israeli research colleague and bioinformatician Oded Béjà (from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology), the extent to which pigment synthesis is prevalent in certain marine regions. The biosynthesis of pink pigment 'phycoerythrobilin' was the focus of their work. "The genetic information for the synthesis of the pink pigment is widespread throughout all the world's oceans," says the professor. This is where the researchers made a notable discovery: this information is wide spread in viruses. "The viruses carry genetic information which can be used to produce the pink-colored pigments," Frankenberg-Dinkel explains. The viruses introduce this genetic information into bacterial cells which enable them to synthesise the pink pigment. "What is new is that we are able to use bioinformatic analyses to determine the type of viruses which carry this genetic information," Frankenberg-Dinkel continues. "We were able to show that the viruses most likely affect those microbes for which we do not yet know what purpose the pigment serves."
For her study, Frankenberg-Dinkel and her team analysed datasets obtained from metagenome databases. "These contain all the genetic information of all the organisms we would usually extract during a field trip at sea, for example," the researcher explains. "This technique allows us to gain a detailed insight into the ecosystem without having to investigate it on location.

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How exactly do plants split water? theory behind photosynthesis process

 X-rays captured several images of photosynthesis

 Never mind the ancient story of Moses parting the Red Sea. How exactly do plants split water?

An international team of scientists is getting closer to the answer thanks to unprecedented, atomic-scale images of a protein complex found in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria captured by ultrafast X-ray lasers.
The experiments, led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), are helping researchers narrow down the process by which the protein, called photosystem II, uses light energy to split water and create oxygen. Nearly all the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced in this system. Just as importantly, this reaction also yields protons and electrons that are used to reduce carbon dioxide to carbohydrates later in the photosynthesis cycle.
The images, published in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal Nature, provide the first high-resolution 3-D view of photosystem II in action, a feat accomplished by using unimaginably fast X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Photosystem II is found in the thylakoid, a compartment in chloroplasts and cyanobacteria surrounded by a membrane. The thylakoid is where the light-dependent reactions in photosynthesis occur, yet the exact nature of those reactions have, paradoxically, been in the dark for scientists.
"There have been cryo-images taken when the protein was in a dark or resting state," said study principal investigator Junko Yano, senior scientist at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division. "But the stages of photosystem II do not proceed at freezing temperatures. What we have been able to do for the first time using X-ray lasers is study this process at room temperature so we can tell what is actually happening in nature."
Yano worked with co-principal investigator Vittal Yachandra, and senior authors Nicholas Sauter and Jan Kern, all members of Berkeley Lab's Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division.
"We have been trying for decades to understand how plants split water into oxygen, protons, and electrons," said Yachandra. "Understanding how nature accomplishes this difficult reaction so easily is important for developing a cost-effective method for solar-based water-splitting, which is essential for artificial photosynthesis and renewable energy."
They were especially interested in the protein's small metal catalyst, an oxygen-evolving complex in which oxygen atoms bridge four manganese atoms with one calcium atom. How this catalyst stores the energy from photons and oxidizes two water molecules has been a key question in photosynthesis.
"To our surprise, we found that the two leading theories explaining the mechanisms for how the reaction proceeds are probably not correct," said Yachandra. "If the theories were correct, we would have seen water binding to specific sites and other predicted features in the protein. This means that something else is going on, so now we're homing in on the right answer by process of elimination."
Capturing data before destruction
The ability to peek into the process of splitting water at room temperature has been hindered by the fact that most imaging or crystallography technology using X-ray lasers blasts the samples to bits before meaningful data can be collected. Recent advances made possible by the LCLS changed that.
"The beauty of the LCLS is that the laser pulses are so short -- only 40 femtoseconds in duration, but very intense -- that you can collect the data before the sample is destroyed," said Kern. "It's very new, and there are only two places in the world where that can be done at present."
A femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second. To get a sense of the scale, it can be compared to what one second would be in a span of about 30 million years.
Getting higher-resolution details that show molecular bonds also requires higher-quality crystal samples grown in precisely controlled conditions.
"The spatial resolution of the structure we're reporting is 2.25 angstroms," said Kern. "We're trying to see the process at extremely tiny length scales, and this is the first time we're getting a spatial resolution that even approaches that. We're only beginning to understand the story."
At LCLS, the researchers first illuminated their crystal samples with green photons to trigger the photosynthetic reactions in photosystem II. They then shot the X-ray pulses at the crystals, yielding diffraction data that was quickly collected before the crystal was destroyed. The researchers used ammonia as a marker to help determine the location of water molecules throughout the structure. If ammonia was present at a binding site, then the researchers knew that water was not there.
Putting the pieces together
Software algorithms developed by Sauter, Paul Adams (also of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division at Berkeley Lab), and their respective groups were then used to translate the diffraction readings into the 3-D rendering of photosystem II.
Since each crystal sample can only survive one shot of the X-ray laser before being blasted to smithereens, the researchers had to grow hundreds of thousands of them to obtain enough data to cover the intermediate stages in the reaction.
"At LCLS, you only get a tiny sliver of data at a time, so you have to piece them all together," said Sauter in describing the role of the software used to create the images. "It's like taking a puzzle, dumping all the pieces on the floor, and then putting them back together."
 

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REASONS WHY PEOPLE WITH EBOLA VIRUS MAY NOT SHOWS SYMPTOMS OF IT EARLY

Ebola outbreak have become one of the most feared virus. it was first dicovered in a seria leone village. and it brokes out into other west africa countries

A year after the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine and other institutions identified 14 individuals previously unknown to have had the disease in a Sierra Leone village that was an Ebola hot spot.

These individuals had antibodies to the virus, suggesting they had been infected at one time. Yet 12 of these individuals said they had had no symptoms during the time of active transmission in the village.
The research confirms previous suspicions that the Ebola virus does not uniformly cause severe disease, and that people may be infected without showing signs of illness, said Gene Richardson, MD, a former fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford who is now a PhD candidate in anthropology at the university. The findings also suggest that the epidemic was more widespread than previously believed. Based on the results of the study, the researchers calculated the prevalence of minimally symptomatic infection to be 25 percent.
"The study corroborates previous evidence that Ebola is like most other viruses in that it causes a spectrum of manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection," Richardson said. "It provides important evidence on that front. It also means a significant portion of transmission events may have gone undetected during the outbreak. This shows there was a lot more human-to-human transmission than we thought."
The study will be published online Nov. 15 in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The study also will be presented Nov. 14 at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's annual meeting in Atlanta. Richardson is lead author of the study, and Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, a Harvard professor and director of Partners In Health, is the senior author.
Testing individuals
The research was done in the rural village of Sukudu in Sierra Leone, a country where Richardson and his colleagues cared for hundreds of patients in Ebola treatment units managed by Partners In Health.
The village, with about 900 residents, had been one of three major hot spots in the Kono District, in the eastern part of the country, during the heat of the Ebola crisis between November 2014 and February 2015. There were 34 reported cases of Ebola in the village, including 28 deaths.
More than 28,000 cases of Ebola infection were reported in Africa during the epidemic, the largest and longest in history. More than 11,000 people are estimated to have died because of the disease.
In the aftermath, Richardson and his colleagues decided to go back to the village to try to determine whether the Ebola infection could be minimally symptomatic, as previous studies have suggested. He worked with a local physician and two community health workers in gathering data for the study, a process that was approved by the local village chief.
They used a test known as the ELISA assay, a technique that can detect the presence of an antibody. They first made sure the test was accurate by comparing results from 30 Ebola survivors in Sukudu with those of 132 people in other villages where the virus had not been reported.
Richardson said the test proved to be a reasonable measure of viral antibodies. The researchers then recruited 187 men, women and children from Sukudu who had likely been exposed to Ebola, either because they were living in the same household or had shared a public toilet with a person confirmed to have had the disease.
Of these, 14 were found to be carrying antibodies to Ebola, suggesting they had been infected at some point, though they had not been included in the original count. Twelve of them said they had had no symptoms of the disease, which typically causes fever, unexplained bleeding, headache, muscle pain, rash, vomiting, diarrhea, breathing problems and difficulty swallowing. Two recalled having had a fever at the time of the outbreak, the scientists reported.
Public health efforts not entirely effective
In combining the initial reports of 34 infections with the 14 newly identified cases, the researchers calculated the prevalence of minimally symptomatic infection in the village to have been 25 percent.
Richardson said it is unknown if an asymptomatic individual is capable of transmitting the virus. Because these individuals did not have an active case of the disease, "They were not passing it along in the usual way, through vomiting or diarrhea," he said. "It's unclear if they can pass it along it sexually."
The virus has been shown to hide out for months in semen, even after symptoms have subsided, with some published cases of survivors transmitting the virus through sexual contact.
Richardson said the study indicates that public health efforts to prevent infection and contain the virus during the epidemic were not entirely effective.
"It reminds us that we need to do a much, much better job in future epidemics," Richardson said.
He and his colleagues are now working in other villages in Sierra Leone where public health surveillance was poor during the epidemic, testing and interviewing individuals to get a better handle on the true number of people affected during the crisis.
"We expect to find a lot more undocumented survivors, so we can begin to answer the question of what was the true burden of disease," he said.

researchers are working on the true burden of ebola disease

 {{tags}}ebola virus| disease| seria leonne| antibodies| cure for ebola|symptoms of ebola|{{/tag}}

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A method- have- been- discovered to- regenerate- spinal cord wire -with-the help-of- mice experiments

accidents to the spinal wire can motive paralysis and other permanent disabilities due to the fact severed nerve fibers do now not regrow. Now, scientists of the German center for Neurodegenerative sicknesses (DZNE) have succeeded in releasing a molecular brake that stops the regeneration of nerve connections. treatment of mice with "Pregabalin," a drug that acts upon the growth inhibiting mechanism, brought on damaged nerve connections to regenerate.

the damaging effect of spinal cord

Researchers led through neurobiologist Frank Bradke record on these findings in the magazine Neuron.

Human nerve cells are interconnected in a network that extends to all components of the frame. in this manner control signals are transmitted from head to toe, at the same time as sensory inputs glide within the opposite course. For this to manifest, impulses are passed from neuron to neuron, not in contrast to a relay race. Damages to this wiring device can have drastic results -- specifically in the event that they have an effect on the brain or the spinal cord. this is because the cells of the crucial nervous device are related by means of long projections. when severed, those projections, which are known as "axons," are unable to regrow.

Reawakening a lost talent

Neural pathways which have been injured can only regenerate if new connections rise up between the affected cells. In a feel, the neurons ought to stretch out their arms, i.e. the axons ought to grow. In truth, this happens inside the early tiers of embryonic development. however, this capacity disappears within the adult. Can it be reactivated? This changed into the query Professor Bradke and co-people asked themselves. "We began from the hypothesis that neurons actively down-alter their increase program once they have reached other cells, in order that they do not overshoot the mark. this means, there must be a braking mechanism this is caused as soon as a neuron connects to others," says Dr. Andrea Tedeschi, a member of the Bradke Lab and first writer of the current book.

searching through the genome

In mice and cellular cultures, the scientists commenced an in depth look for genes that adjust the boom of neurons. "That was like searching out the proverbial needle in the haystack. There are hundreds of energetic genes in every nerve mobile, depending on its degree of development. to analyze the big facts set we heavily depended on bioinformatics. To this cease, we cooperated carefully with colleagues at the college of Bonn," says Bradke. "in the end, we had been able to identify a promising candidate. This gene, known as Cacna2d2, plays an critical function in synapse formation and characteristic, in other words in bridging the final hole among nerve cells." during further experiments, the researchers changed the gene's activity, e.g. with the aid of deactivating it. in this manner, they had been capable of prove that Cacna2d2 does truly impact axonal growth and the regeneration of nerve fibers.

Pregabalin brought on neuronal boom

Cacna2d2 encodes the blueprint of a protein that is part of a larger molecular complicated. The protein anchors ion channels within the mobile membrane that modify the glide of calcium debris into the cell. Calcium stages have an effect on cell procedures consisting of the discharge of neurotransmitters. these ion channels are therefore critical for the communique among neurons.

In further investigations, the researchers used Pregabalin (PGB), a drug that had lengthy been acknowledged to bind to the molecular anchors of calcium channels. Over a length of numerous weeks, they administered PGB to mice with spinal cord injuries. because it became out, this remedy prompted new nerve connections to develop.

"Our take a look at indicates that synapse formation acts as a effective switch that restrains axonal boom. A clinically-relevant drug can manipulate this impact," says Bradke. In fact, PGB is already being used to deal with lesions of the spinal wire, albeit it's far carried out as a pain killer and relatively overdue after the injury has befell. "PGB would possibly have a regenerative impact in patients, if it's miles given soon sufficient. inside the long term this may result in a new treatment method. however, we don't know yet."

a brand new mechanism?

In preceding research, the DZNE researchers confirmed that sure cancer pills can also cause damaged nerve connections to regrow. the main protagonists on this manner are the "microtubules," long protein complexes that stabilize the cellular body. while the microtubules develop, axons do as nicely. Is there a connection among the distinctive findings? "We don't know whether those mechanisms are independent or whether or not they are in some way associated," says Bradke. "that is some thing we need to have a look at greater intently within the destiny."

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A study have proved how bacteria on human skin helps secrete protein.

He has shown that the maximum commonplace bacteria on human skin secrete a protein which protects us from the reactive oxygen species concept to contribute to several pores and skin illnesses. The protein has an equally strong effect on dangerous oxygen species as known antioxidants which include diet C and diet E.The pores and skin bacterium is calledPropionibacterium acnes."The name originates from the fact that the bacterium was first found on a patient with severe acne. however whether it causes acne is uncertain -- it could were present merely due to the fact it is so not unusual," says Rolf Lood at the department of medical Sciences in Lund.He has found that the "acne bacterium" secretes a protein referred to as RoxP. This protein protects towards what is called oxidative pressure, a condition wherein reactive oxygen species harm cells. A commonplace cause of oxidative strain on the skin is UV radiation from the solar."This protein is crucial for the bacterium's very survival on our skin. The bacterium improves its dwelling environment via secreting RoxP, however in doing so it additionally benefits us," explains Rolf Lood.Oxidative strain is considered to be a contributing thing in several pores and skin sicknesses, which includes atopic dermatitis, psoriasis and pores and skin most cancers.in view that Propionibacterium acnes is so commonplace, it's miles found in each healthy individuals and those with pores and skin illnesses. consistent with Rolf Lood, but, people have unique quantities of the bacterium on their pores and skin, and it could also produce greater or less of the protective protein RoxP.this may now be further investigated in both sufferers and laboratory animals by way of Lood and his team. The human look at will examine patients with basal cell carcinoma, a pre-cancerous condition known as actinic keratosis and a healthful control institution. The study can be in a position to show whether there is any connection between the diploma of infection and the amount of RoxP on the affected person's pores and skin.The take a look at on laboratory animals will even have a look at whether RoxP also capabilities as safety. right here, mice who have been given RoxP and others who have now not can be uncovered to UV radiation. The researchers will then have a look at whether or not the RoxP mice have a higher outcome than individuals who had been no longer given the protecting protein."If the have a look at outcomes are fantastic, they may lead to the inclusion of RoxP in sunscreens and its use within the treatment of psoriasis and atopic dermatitis," hopes Rolf Lood. His research findings have lately been published in a piece of writing in theNaturejournalScientific reviews.

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