There has been a rapid increase in the incidence of laryngeal cancer in the West over the past two decades, to the point that some have called it an epidemic.
This is due to a significant rise in the incidence of a certain type of throat cancer called oropharyngeal cancer (the area of the tonsils and the back of the throat).
Experts revealed that the main cause of this cancer is the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is also the main cause of cervical cancer.
Now, oropharyngeal cancer is more common than cervical cancer in the United States and the United Kingdom. The human papillomavirus is transmitted through sexual contact. For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of sexual partners, primarily the practice of oral sex.
In a study conducted by Hisham Muhanna, a professor at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham, which included about 1,000 people who underwent tonsillectomy for reasons not related to cancer in the United Kingdom, 80% of adults reported that they had had oral sex at some point in their lives.
However, only a small number of these people develop oropharyngeal cancer.
The prevailing theory is that most of us will be infected with HPV and be able to clear it completely. However, only a small number of people are able to clear the infection, perhaps due to a defect in the immune system, as the virus is able to replicate continuously, and over time it integrates into random sites in the host's DNA, some of which can cause the host cells to become cancerous. .
This has prompted several countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, to expand their national HPV vaccination recommendations to include young boys, in a so-called gender-neutral vaccination policy.
But having a comprehensive vaccination policy does not guarantee that everyone will be targeted. A large percentage of people oppose HPV vaccination due to concerns about safety or necessity.
Hawaii : Scientists believe that it is the electrons coming from the Earth that form water on the moon.
Scientists have discovered that high-energy electrons in Earth's plasma layer contribute to weathering processes on the Moon's surface and, more importantly, may have helped form water on the Moon's surface.
The team, led by the University of Hawaii (UH) at Manoa, says understanding the concentration and distribution of water on the Moon is critical to understanding its formation and evolution, and providing water resources for future human exploration.
The new discovery may also help explain the origin of water ice previously discovered in permanently shaded areas on the moon's surface.
Because of Earth's magnetism, there is a force field surrounding the planet, referred to as the magnetosphere, which protects Earth from space weathering (the harsh conditions of the space environment to which any object is exposed) and harmful radiation from the Sun.
The solar wind pushes and reshapes the magnetosphere, forming a long tail on the night side. The plasma layer inside this magnetotail is a region consisting of high-energy electrons and ions that can be obtained from the Earth and the solar wind.
In the new study published in the journal "Nature Astronomy," scientists found that high-energy electrons present in the plasma layer of our planet contribute to weathering processes on the moon's surface and may have helped in the formation of water there.
Scientists studied data from India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to understand the detection of water ice in permanently shaded areas on the moon. The data was collected in the period 2008-2009 using the Lunar Mineral Chart.
Understanding the origin of water on the moon is important for scientists because it could help in future space exploration.
"When the Moon is outside the magnetotail, the Moon's surface is bombarded by solar wind," said Shuai Li, an associate researcher at the University of Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology (SOEST), and the formation of the Moon is expected to decrease. The water is close to zero.
The scientists relied on previous work by Lee that showed that the oxygen in the Earth's magnetotail is rusty iron in the lunar polar region, and decided to investigate changes in surface weathering as the Moon passes through the Earth's magnetotail.
"Remote sensing observations have shown that the composition of water in the Earth's magnetotail is almost identical to the time when the Moon was outside the Earth's magnetotail," Lee revealed. "This suggests that, in the magnetotail, there may be additional formation processes or new sources of water that are not closely related to "Direct solar wind protons. In particular, radiation from high-energy electrons shows effects similar to solar wind protons."
“Overall, this result and my previous discoveries about the Moon’s rusty poles indicate that Mother Earth is strongly connected to its Moon in many unknown aspects,” Li noted.
In future research, Li aims to work on a lunar mission through NASA's Artemis programs to monitor the plasma environment and water content on the lunar polar surface when the Moon is in different phases while traversing Earth's magnetotail.
The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.