Solar Activity & the Definition of Melanocyte

[Snowy Owl]

Definition of Melanocyte

Melanocyte: A pigment-producing cell in the skin, hair and eye that determines their color. The pigment that melanocytes make is called melanin.

The major determinant of color is not the number but rather the activity of the melanocytes.

Melanin production takes place in unique organelles (tiny structures within the cell) known as melanosomes. Darkly pigmented skin, hair and eyes have melanosomes that contain more melananin.

The melanosome

Melanosomes rearrange themselves within the cell in response to external cues such as ultraviolet rays or mutations in their transport system.

Melanosomes usually cluster together near the center of the cell but can rapidly redistribute themselves to the ends of dendritic (tooth-like) processes projecting from the cell.

Melanosome redistribution involves long-range transport from the center along microtubules and, along the periphery, short-range capture and transport. Each melanocyte supplies melanin to approximately 30 nearby keratinocytes via its dendrites.

Embryology

Melanocytes originate in the neural crest and migrate to the basal layer of the epidermis and the hair matrices. These neural crest-derived cells are not confined to the skin and hair. They also migrate to the inner ear, uveal tract in the eye and the leptomeninges in the brain. The failure of melanocytes to migrate to these locations explains the association of congenital white spotting of the skin (piebaldism) with heterochromia (the juxtaposition of different colors) in the iris as well as congenital deafness in Waardenburg syndrome.

Forms of melanin

There are two major forms of melanin -- eumelanin and pheomelanin.

Eumelanin is brown to black while pheomelanin is yellow to red. The regulation of the production of eumelanin versus pheomelanin involves the interaction of the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) on the surface of the melanocyte with melanocyte stimulating hormone (MSH) or with the agouti signaling protein. The binding of MSH to MC1R results in the formation of eumelanin while the binding of the agouti protein to MC1R leads to the production of pheomelanin. Tanning of the skin due to UV exposure represents an increase in the content of eumelanin within the epidermis and its major purpose is increased photoprotection.

Disorders of pigmentation

These can result from a change in the number of melanocytes or a decrease or increase in their activity. Leukoderma in association with inflammatory disorders of the skin such as atopic dermatitis and vitiligo are two of the more common disorders of hypopigmentation. One of the most common disorders of hyperpigmentation is melasma (also known as mask of pregnancy) which is seen primarily, but not exclusively, in women and may or may not have its onset during pregnancy. Exposure to the sun plays a very important role in the induction and maintenance of these areas of hyperpigmentation on the face.

Malignancy

Melanoma is a malignant tumor that arises from a mutant melanocyte.

Melanoma occurs in all races but is most common in people with fair skin. Most melanomas present as a dark, mole-like spot that spreads and tends to have an irregular border. The risk of melanoma increases with overexposure to the sun and sunburn. Fair-skinned people and people with a family history of melanoma should always use a high-SPF sunscreen when outdoors.

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=4341

 

[Snowy Owl]

Re: Definition of Melanocyte

Re: Definition of Melanocyte

The solar wind is now understood to be a plasma, a mixture of protons and electrons

Plasma

The solar wind is now understood to be a plasma, a mixture of protons and electrons that moves away from the Sun at supersonic speeds. Plasma is a very hot state of matter where atoms have been ripped apart into their smaller parts, protons and electrons. Since plasmas are charged, and affected by magnetic fields, it is very important to understand how the solar wind plasma is affected by the magnetic fields of the planets it encounters. For example, the solar wind has a very different effect on the Earth, which has a strong magnetic field, than it has on Mars, which has a much weaker magnetic field.

Energetic Particles

In addition to the solar wind particles, occasionally the Sun produces bursts of more energetic (faster) particles. Some of these are produced in solar flares, which show themselves as intense brightening of a small patch of the photosphere?also giving off blasts of x-rays, gamma rays, and radio waves. Flares produce a beam of energetic particles in space that can reach us at nearly the speed of light if we are in its path.

The Sun also has a second way of producing such energetic particle storms.

Sometimes large loops of coronal material erupt into the solar wind in what is called a coronal mass ejection or CME. The CME can produce a shock wave in the solar wind as it travels outward, and the shock wave itself makes a broad source of energetic particles. Because the CME shock wave source is much wider than the flare beam, CMEs are thought to be the primary cause of energetic particle events detected near the Earth. The CME disturbance in the solar wind, including the shock wave ahead of it, reaches Earth in 2-3 days, faster than most solar wind. It is this disturbance that causes geomagnetic storms on the Earth. The auroras that occur with these storms are a result of particles in the magnetosphere reacting to the passing disturbance.

A Closed Circuit
Every square meter of the Earth is pierced by a line of magnetic force, which loops from deep inside the Earth, and far into space, only to return back in a great closed circuit thousands of kilometers away. If there were no Sun or solar wind, the Earth's magnetic field would extend far beyond the orbit of the moon and millions of kilometers into interplanetary space, in the same shape as a bar magnet field outlined by iron filings. In reality, the action of the solar wind changes this picture rather dramatically.

On the daytime side, the field is pushed in by the solar wind pressure, and on the nighttime side, it is invisibly stretched out like a comet's tail. Scientists call the region near the Earth where its field controls the motions of electrically charged particles the magnetosphere. As the Earth rotates, and as the solar wind and coronal mass ejections buffet it from the outside, the magnetosphere trembles and can become stormy. When these rapid, though subtle, changes happen, compass bearings can become unreliable by up to several degrees at the Earth's surface. In space, even more dramatic changes can happen.

A Sun-Earth System
When the solar wind and the magnetosphere are taken together they operate like a powerful, but invisible system. Depending on the magnetization of the particles in the solar wind the field can be southward or northward attracting or repelling the Earth's field. On the daytime side of the Earth, these fields connect together and cause a transfer of particles and magnetic energy into the Earth?s magnetosphere from the solar wind. These changes in the Earth's particles and fields cause severe ?magnetic storms? which can be easily seen at ground level with sensitive magnetic field detectors called magnetometers.

The magnetotail resembles a comet?s tail and is stretched by the solar wind into a vast cylinder of magnetism nearly one million kilometers long. Changes in the solar wind and in the magnetosphere can also cause the magnetotail region to change in complex ways.

Rubber Bands and Rings
Magnetic fields in the magnetotail can snap like rubber bands and reconnect themselves, and the particles tied to field will flow down these field lines and plunge deep into the interior of the magnetosphere cavity producing auroras.

Some of these particles can take up temporary residence in an equatorial zone called the ring current. In this vast, invisible river nearly 40,000 kilometers wide, positively-charged particles flow westwards and negatively-charged particles flow eastwards like two trains on opposite tracks. In fact, the flows are so dilute that they actually occupy the same space. Other particles from the magnetotail ride the field lines deep into the Earth's atmosphere carrying the currents which power the beautiful aurora.

http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/lws_gems/6/secef_7.htm

 

[Snowy Owl]

Re: Definition of Melanocyte

Re: Definition of Melanocyte

Neutrinos are tiny particles that have no electric charge and little or no mass. They interact with atoms of matter so rarely that the average neutrino can pass through the Earth (or even the entire universe) without hitting anything.

Scientists assume that great numbers of neutrinos constantly stream through human beings and everything else on Earth, causing neither sensation nor discernible injury.

Part of the neutrino flow reaching the Earth comes from the thermonuclear reactions that fuel the Sun, but there are too few solar neutrinos with high enough energy to cause appreciable biological damage, Dr. Collar said.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...0A15752C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

New predictive impact on cancer formation related to solar neutrinos flux crossing the human body​

Proc. SPIE, Vol. 4378, 90*(2001); DOI:10.1117/12.438188
Online Publication Date: 22 April 2003

Conference Date: Monday 16 April 2001
Conference Location: Orlando, FL, USA
Conference Title: Chemical and Biological Sensing II
Conference Chairs: Patrick J. Gardner


ABSTRACT
Sneer Meer

Cancer and Bio-Atoms Research Foundation (Israel)

The aim of this paper is to study a new predictive impact on Cancer Formation constituted by the Solar Neutrinos Flux.

Billions of Solar Neutrinos particles cross the human body each second without our feeling anything, and this phenomenon can give a valid reply to three basic questions on Cancer Formation such as:
1. Why Cancer appears at all types of cells
2. Why Cancer appears at all ages
3. Why Cancer appears in all segments of the human body

It is experimentally proved that Solar Neutrinos interact with an atom of Chlorine 37, converting this stable atom in an unstable radioactive atom as Argon 37, and Molybdenum, is converted under Solar Neutrinos Flux in a radioactive atom of Technitium, Gallium 71 is converted into an unstable radioactive atom of Germanium, and I think that the list is not closed.

It is well known that Chlorine 37 atoms and others are found in each cell in the human body assuring the vital metabolism of all our cells and astrophysicists experiments related to this subject of Chlorine 37 have a crucial importance for general medical sciences also especially in the field of Cancer diseases.

Today, for the first time in the world, studies in Cancer Formation under Neutrinos Effects crossing the human body, can be made as soon as possible under an International and an Interdisciplinary Cooperation with special equipment such as the Biocassette-Telebiological-Microscopy (BTM) and its versatility, presented in this paper with some preliminary experiments.

The purpose of this BTM system is to be able to see and follow in a continuous and dynamic form by Video-TV-Recorder system any changes or transformations of a normal human cell into a malignant cell in all its forms.

Results will be concluded after this first proposal of such first kinds of experiments in the Medical Field related to a Common Denominator in Cancer.

?2003 COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
DOI Link:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.438188