Statistics from the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China show that the number of Chinese people with alopecia or hair loss has been rising sharply in recent years, and has exceeded 250 million. However, ...
Jun 11, 2021
0
6
A light-activated drug that can enter and kill cancer and bacterial cells without harming nearby healthy cells has been tested successfully in zebrafish and cells.
Jun 01, 2021
1
146
Professor Ueyama Takehiko (Biosignal Research Center, Kobe University) and the inner ear research group (Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine) have identified the cell types in the inner ear cochlea responsible for the ...
May 25, 2021
0
1
The lifetime risk of breast cancer is similar among Black and white women in the U.S., but Black women are disproportionately affected by aggressive breast cancer subtypes such as estrogen receptor (ER) negative tumors, which ...
May 24, 2021
0
2
Researchers at Oregon State University have found a key new piece of the puzzle in the quest to use gene therapy to enable people born deaf to hear.
May 19, 2021
0
24
When Joke Alesh, a Rhode Island dentist, became a new mother, one of her worries was whether germs would be able to hitch a ride home from the office on her long, braided hair and pose a risk for her baby. And when COVID ...
May 14, 2021
0
2
Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have made several discoveries on the functioning mechanisms of the inner hair cells of the ear, which convert sounds into nerve signals that are processed in the brain. The results, ...
May 10, 2021
0
279
A gene called GAS2 plays a key role in normal hearing, and its absence causes severe hearing loss, according to a study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
May 07, 2021
2
102
A team of Tulane University researchers has launched a study to better understand how children are affected by skin and hair-type discrimination as they develop into adulthood.
May 06, 2021
0
1
People who compulsively pull their hair—suffering from an affliction known as trichotillomania—could find relief with a device created by Rice University students.
May 03, 2021
1
32
Hair is a protein filament that grows through the epidermis from follicles deep within the dermis. The fine, soft hair found on many nonhuman mammals is typically called fur; wool is the characteristically curly hair found on sheep and goats. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class. Although other non-mammals, especially insects, show filamentous outgrowths, these are not considered "hair" in the scientific sense. So-called "hairs" (trichomes) are also found on plants. The projections on arthropods such as insects and spiders are actually insect bristles, composed of a polysaccharide called chitin. There are varieties of cats, dogs, and mice bred to have little or no visible fur. In some species, hair is absent at certain stages of life. The main component of hair fiber is keratin.
The hair can be divided into three parts length-wise, (1) the bulb, a swelling at the base which originates from the dermis, (2) the root, which is the hair lying beneath the skin surface, and (3) the shaft, which is the hair above the skin surface. In cross-section, there are also three parts, (1) the medulla, an area in the core which contains loose cells and airspaces (2) the cortex, which contains densely packed keratin and (3) the cuticle, which is a single layer of cells arranged like roof shingles.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
