
Top Stories 
Published On January 18, 2017
TECHNOLOGY
Skin Deep
Photographer Cara Phillips captures skin damage, beautifully.
Skin damage can be hard to see with the naked eye, but photographer Cara Phillips captures her subjects under ultraviolet light, a standby tool of dermatologists. With its shorter wavelength, UV light passes beneath the surface layer of the skin to expose spots of melanin below—part of the body’s response to sun damage. For Phillips, highlighting this damage contrasts with “a culture dominated by retouched images.”
Such damage to the skin can lead to melanoma, one of the more dangerous forms of skin cancer. Men with melanoma fare worse than woman do, and are twice as likely to die from the disease. A study published last December in Science Translational Medicine may begin to explain why. A gene called PPP2R3B helps prevent melanoma, and women benefit more from this because they originally have two X chromosomes, where the gene is found. The vast majority of men have only one X chromosome.
Dispatches

Why Doctors Must Solve the Suicide Problem As despair deaths reach historic levels in the United States, interventions at health care checkpoints may be the best way to bring them down.

Change of Heart The risk of dying from heart disease varies dramatically from one ZIP code to the next. Researchers are teasing apart the reasons why.

Predicting Suicide Harvard psychology professor Matthew Nock has undertaken a large-scale study to understand why people take their own lives and find ways to assess those at risk.

Bumps in the Night A barrage of well-timed noises may, surprisingly, make for a more restful night’s sleep.

How Poor Diet Shapes the Brain A high-fat, high-sugar diet can cause harm to the hippocampus—and that may lead, perversely, to even worse impulses around unhealthy food.

Organs on Ice If transplant organs could be kept fresher for longer, they could help thousands more on waitlists.
