80 students shave heads to support classmate with cancer returning to school

To the 80 students who shaved their heads, it was just hair, but to 9-year-old Marlee Pack, it's her life.

After being diagnosed with Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of cancer that develops from connective tissues in the body, a year ago, Marlee was finally returning to Meridian Elementary School in Broomfield, Colorado.

In an effort to support her best friend, Cameron McLaughlin decided to donate a portion of her long, curly locks, but didn't feel like that was enough — she wanted to shave her entire head.

"When Cameron told Marlee she was thinking about shaving her head, Marlee got a huge smile on her face and said 'we can be baldy besties together!'" Cheray McLaughlin, Cameron's mom, told TODAY.com.

Cameron's idea blossomed into a school-wide event on March 16 called "Be Bold, Be Brave, Go Bald," where 80 students, three female teachers, both male principals and even a student's mom got their heads shaved.

"We thought, what if we asked people to donate their hair or shave their head to raise money for a good cause?" McLaughlin said.

That's when McLaughlin teamed up with teacher Jody Hempelmann, who came up with the idea to raise funds for St. Baldrick's Foundation, an organization that supports childhood cancer research. Her husband Chris has been donating his hair to the foundation for a few years in honor of his coworkers son.

They ended up raising over $25,000 and eight stylists offered their services during the event. Those who would rather donate hair than shave their heads were invited to drop by Salon Toujours Belle after school.

"I didn't think that many people would shave their heads, but I feel good about going back to school and not being the only bald one," Marlee told TODAY.com.

Although the stylists were doing most of the shaving, Marlee got the opportunity to shave the head of her first grade teacher, Erin Dupper, which she found very exciting.

"I feel very connected to Marlee and wanted to do something to show her how much I care, so I thought shaving my head seemed like an easy thing to do," Dupper told TODAY.com.

Marlee was there for Cameron for moral support and held her hand the whole time she was getting her head shaved. "It's OK to cry," Marlee assured her.

"The kids getting to see Marlee upbeat, happy and brave instead of the sick girl they were imagining made it a celebration," Dupper said.

Marlee's mom, Shelly Pack, has seen her daughter come out of her shell since the diagnosis.

"She's been through so much in the past year, I think she just faces life head on now," Pack told TODAY.com. "This event only made her even more outgoing, confident and happy and as her mom, it's refreshing to see."

Source:http://www.today.com/news/80-students-shave-heads-support-classmate-cancer-returning-school-t86291

Moleskine’s Smart Writing Set digitizes your notes with a smartpen and notebook

Moleskine may trace its history to a more nostalgic time, branding itself as the “heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries,” but now, it’s getting a bit of a modern twist. On Wednesday, the company unveiled its new Smart Writing Set, which promises to work together with a smart pen and an app to instantly digitize notes and sketches made on paper. It’s a far cry from the notebooks used by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin — but hey, if they had this kind of technology available to them, they probably would’ve championed it too.

Comprising three components, the Smart Writing Set seems well suited for the wistful millennial, allowing you to maintain your attachment to pen and paper while recognizing the benefits of technology. Thanks to the special Paper Tablet notebook, the smart Pen+, and the companion app, you’ll be able to digitally edit and share what you create on paper in real time, all without ever having to take a photo, upload, or scan anything at all.

The Paper Tablet is certainly reminiscent of a traditional Moleskine, but is “specially marked” with a grid of little dots so that the pen knows exactly what you’re marking down. It’s still paper, but makes use of invisible NCode technology by NeoLAB Convergence embedded within each page. The pen itself is quite the technological achievement — a small, embedded camera is responsible for a lot of the magic, keeping track of your scribbles and converting them to a digital format. And of course, the app allows you to access all your work in various, non-paper media, and share everything with just about everyone.

Sure, there’s nothing particularly novel about this new product offering, but when it comes from Moleskine, it certainly lends a sense of gravitas to the project. That said, you’ll pay for the name — the set doesn’t come cheap, launching at $199 for the Pen+ and the Paper Tablet. But considering what you’re paying for their normal, non-advanced notebooks, maybe this isn’t such a splurge after all.

source: www.digitaltrends.com

Breaking: Doctors Can Now Use Light to Fight Cancer!

Doctors have found an exciting new non-evasive light therapy that can help the body’s own cells fight cancer! Supporting our own bodies in fighting disease, aka immunotherapy, is one of the most popular and growing areas of cancer research. Let’s face it, people are tired of chemotherapy and would prefer to avoid dangerous surgeries if they can help it. Now, with new therapies such and this new light technology we can boost the body without harming it.

Assistant professor Yubin Zhou, Ph.D. from the Center for Translational Cancer Research located at the Texas A&M Health Science Center Institute of Biosciences & Technology is actively studying how light can be used to control our body’s immune system and use it to fight cancer.

“Although neuroscientists have been using light to stimulate neurons for years, this is the first time the technique, called optogenetics, has been used in the immune system,” Zhou said.

“Neuroscientists have learned a lot about brain circuits using the technique,” Zhou said, “and now researchers in many other fields are giving it a try.”

Optogenetics and the Immune System

Zhou and his team have found a way to modify the technique in order to help the immune system. The work wasn’t easy: unlike nerve cells, your immune system’s cells don’t use known electrical impulses to communicate. Another challenge is that our immune system cells are deep inside the body and are constantly moving around making it hard to hit with the right amount of light.

They had to use some out of the box thinking and team work to figure out.

“We collaborated with Dr. Gang Han at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who does bionanotechnology and photomedicine development,” Zhou said. “Together, we were able to combine state-of-the-art optogenetic approaches with cutting edge nanotechnology.”

The new nanotechnology known as optogenetic immunomodulation was recently published in an article in eLife.

“This work was driven by talented scientists in the lab: graduate students Lian He and Peng Tan and postdoctoral research fellow Guolin Ma, Ph.D.,” Zhou said, “who fearlessly undertook this daunting project and overcame all the challenging obstacles to make this technique into reality.”

Doctors can use Light to Direct Immune System Cells

With this new technique, the researchers were able to control immune system cells and ‘instruct’ them to kill cancerous tumor cells. Using a near-infrared laser beam that is able to penetrate a few centimeters into your body the scientists can use nanoparticles to turn blue and direct the engineered immune cells to fight specific cancer cells. Just imagine a general and his

war-games-with-the-brain-as-the-generalJust imagine a general and his troops about to go into battle and once they get the light signal from central command they team up and destroy the cancer cells.

 “We are able to wirelessly control the action of immune cells buried deep in tissue,” Zhou said.

The researchers found a way to modify the immune cells so that their calcium gate-controlling protein was light sensitive. When they are exposed to blue light which is emitted by the nanoparticle they ‘open the ion gates’. Once the light is turned off the gates then close. Researchers can increase the flow of calcium into the cells by increase the flow of light.

They are still working on fine tuning the calcium-dependent actions of our immune cells so that they can better target tumor cells and invading pathogens that our body would otherwise not notice or be focused on fighting.

When animal tumor tests were conducted they were able to boost the immune system response which aided in the bodies ability to kill the cancer cells.

“The technique reduced tumor size and metastasis, so there are lots of applications,” Zhou said.

One of the biggest advantages of this method is that it only actives a specific type of immune system cell, the T-cell, and only in the area of the body where the light is being shined. When you get chemotherapy the immune system response is bodywide which can be a miserable process. With this non-invasive light tunable technique, they can focus the immune response only on and around the area of concern.

“Other scientists will likely use the technique to help them study immune, heart and other types of cells that use calcium to perform their tasks,” Zhou said. “It’s quite a cool technology. With these tools, we can now not only answer fundamental questions of science that we never could before but also translate it into the clinic for disease intervention.”

Zhou’s lab has been using this technique in order to see how effective specific cancers drugs will even have on people.

“If successful,” Zhou said, “all these efforts would remarkably improve the current cancer immunotherapies by personalizing the treatment to exactly where and when it is needed, while reducing side effects.”

What possible issues do you see with this new light therapy and the genetically modified immune cells? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

When You See These Signs, It Is Time To Detoxify Immediatly!

We live in a world where most people are always looking for ways to live a healthy life. You might find that there is an increased rate of products that claim to help you lose weight and live a healthy life. Some products might work, while others are just fake.

Well, even if you lead a healthy lifestyle, sometimes you can never escape inhaling some pollutions while on the road. The common toxins might be because you inhale the air polluted by the vehicles passing close to you. Once your body is exposed to the toxins, it will work twice harder to get rid of them.

You will need to detoxify as a way to get rid of the toxins in your body. How will you know that actually your body needs detoxifying? Here are some warning signs that will help you know more about toxins in your body.

Continued Lack of Energy

Sometimes you might just wake up feeling all tires as if you were working all night long. Normally you are supposed to feel rejuvenated when waking up and not the other way round. You need to start the detox process if the problem seems to persist.

Insomnia

Sometimes you are likely to have insomnia when the body is full of toxins. The body will release melatonin that helps you to have a good sleep, but that can change when your body has toxins. A good detox process helps your body to restore its natural sleep cycle.

Overheating

If you are continually having hot flashes, and are not connected with menopause, then it is likely toxins in the body causing the hot flashes. The toxin build up in the body will make your heart to work overtime thus overheating will occur. Your body will be trying to eliminate the toxins in the form of sweat.

Occurrence of Skin Issues

Common skin issues that people can experience when they have toxins in the body include itchy rashes and chronic dry skin. To help heal your body, it is about time you started using a topical ointment and other detoxifying agents. Such products will help to keep your skin radiant again.

Belly Fat

The belly fat might not always be as a result of toxins, but it cannot go unmentioned. You need to work on your belly fat to eliminate the toxins that might reside in the belly fat. Start having a workout today to help with such issues.

Congested Sinuses

Having a body overloaded with toxins can be quite tough on your sinuses. This is all because you are inhaling most of the toxins through the sinuses while walking down a street or going to work.

Regular Headaches

Headaches will always mean that you have some serious problem in your body. The regular headaches will lead to mess up schedules for your work. Ensure to try a detox program to help you get relieved of the headaches.

White or Yellow Tongue

The presence of excess of yellow or white film on the tongue, it is a signal that your body is filled with toxins. Your body is trying to do the detoxing by way of tongue and breath, thus leading to the film formation.

Having Gallbladder Issues

Some people tend to feel pain when they eat any fats. That is when you know that the gallbladder has some issues or simply it is overloaded. The increased toxins are likely to lead in risks of getting gallstones.

As a way of helping your body to detoxify, consider doing the following activities.

Sauna

Lymphatic massage

Dry skin brushing

Juicing/Smoothies

Jumping on a trampoline

Exercising

Your doctor might have additional activities and medications for you to take as a way to help with detoxifying. Make sure to use the whole dose to enjoy all the benefits.

This Vitamin Can Stop Cancer Cell Growth – And We Need 25x More Than The Government Thinks

People has been forever wondering what do our bodies need in order to function properly. Believe it or not, the right answer is vitamin D and we will explain you why. Two recent studies published in The Journal of Pediatrics have been conducted which discovered that 70% of the American children do not get the required vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency puts them at higher risk of obesity, diabetes, raised blood pressure, decrease the good cholesterol levels, and can also develop heart disease later in life. 9% of the children have been vitamin D deficient, while 61% did not have required levels of it.

How vitamin D regulates cells and genes

Vitamin D affects our health and function of the cells as it minimizes the cellular growth (which promotes cancer) and boosts cell differentiation (which puts cells into an anti-cancer state), making vitamin D one of the most powerful cancer inhibitors. All this shows why its deficiency is linked to colon, prostate, breast and ovarian cancer.

This vitamin functions on a cellular docking station (receptor) which is sending messages to our genes and in that way controls various functions such as preventing cancer, reducing inflammation, enhancing mood, soothing muscle aches and fibromyalgia, and strengthening bones. When it is not acquire in sufficient amounts, it effects each area of our biology because of its impact on our cells and genes function.