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Thursday, January 8, 2009

Beauty and Skin

A Guide To Give That Concluding Look To Your Appearance
Beauty isn't skin deep but women like to show it on skin. Whatever be their financial problems, women may not hesitate to spend almost anything when it comes to hairstyling, makeup or spa treatments. This is the key driving force of the beauty salon industry.


When Should I Get Cosmetic Surgery
Spice up your sex life and discover a new beauty treatment at the same time. Finally an easy answer to a cellulite free bottom. Is spanking a new beauty treatment?


Looking Younger – The Commitment
Looking for the next beauty bailout? That's just what the USA banking and car industry have done.... and millions of small businesses wish they could too.


The Fat Flush Plan
Millions though, turn to the congress of weight loss products every year for their weight and shape bailout- and it's especially prevalent when its time for all those new year resolutions. Time to get beautiful, time to get in shape, time to get that diet to bail me out of my misery.

Skincare Business

Looking Younger – The Commitment
Your eyes do not only serve as your key in functioning optimally everyday. They also can bring out the beauty in you. You can do it naturally but it can be enhanced further with the use of makeup. Try these styles and you will enjoy it.


Acne Skin Care Treatment Product
Finding beauty products with natural ingredients is important. Skin is the largest organ of the human body. Skin can absorb many things.


Select The Right Moisturizer For Your Skin
Shea Butter is a remarkable ingredient in the skin care business. It is used by many cosmetic companies as a must have. Have you ever thought where does this wonderful ingredient come from and what it can do for you. Find out more by reading this article.

Monday, January 8, 2007

Human Erythrocytes

The diameter of a typical human erythrocyte disk is 6–8 µm, much smaller than most other human cells. A typical erythrocyte contains about 270 million hemoglobin molecules, with each carrying four heme groups.

Adult humans have roughly 2–3 × 1013 red blood cells at any given time (women have about 4 million to 5 million erythrocytes per cubic millimeter (microliter) of blood and men about 5 million to 6 million; people living at high altitudes with low oxygen tension will have more). Red blood cells are thus much more common than the other blood particles: There are about 4,000–11,000 white blood cells and about 150,000–400,000 platelets in a cubic millimeter of human blood. The red blood cells store collectively about 3.5 grams of iron, more than five times the iron stored by all the other tissues combined.

The process by which red blood cells are produced is called erythropoiesis. Erythrocytes are continuously being produced in the red bone marrow of large bones, at a rate of about 2 million per second. (In the embryo, the liver is the main site of red blood cell production.) The production can be stimulated by the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which is used for doping in sports. Just before and after leaving the bone marrow, they are known as reticulocytes which comprise about 1% of circulating red blood cells. Erythrocytes develop from stem cells through reticuloctyes to mature erythrocytes in about 7 days and live a total of about 120 days. The aging cells swell up to a sphere-like shape and are engulfed by phagocytes, destroyed and their materials are released into the blood. The main sites of destruction are the liver and the spleen. The heme constituent of hemoglobin is eventually excreted as bilirubin.

The blood types of humans are due to variations in surface glycoproteins of erythrocytes.
Red blood cells can be separated from blood plasma by centrifugation. During plasma donation, the red blood cells are pumped back into the body right away, and the plasma is collected. Some athletes have tried to improve their performance by doping their blood: First about 1 liter of their blood is extracted, then the red blood cells are isolated, frozen and stored, to be reinjected shortly before the competition. (Red blood cells can be conserved for 5 weeks at −78 °C.) This practice is hard to detect but may endanger the human cardiovascular system which is not equipped to deal with blood of the resulting higher viscosity.

Mammalian Erythrocytes

Erythrocytes in mammals are anucleate when mature, meaning that they don't have a cell nucleus and thus no DNA. In comparison, the erythrocytes of nearly all other vertebrates have nuclei; the only known exception is salamanders of the Batrachoseps genus. Mammalian erythrocytes also lose their other organelles including their mitochondria and produce energy by fermentation, via glycolysis of glucose followed by lactic acid production. Like most cell types, red cells do not have an insulin receptor and thus glucose uptake is not regulated by insulin. As a result of the lack of nucleus and organelles, the cells cannot produce new structural or repair proteins or enzymes and their lifespan is limited.

Mammalian erythrocytes are biconcave disks: flattened and depressed in the center, with a dumb-bell shaped cross section. This shape (as well as the loss of organelles and nucleus) optimizes the cell for the exchange of oxygen with its surroundings. The cells are flexible so as to fit through tiny capillaries, where they release their oxygen load. Erythrocytes are circular, except in the camel family Camelidae, where they are oval.

In large blood vessels, red blood cells sometimes occur as a stack, flat side next to flat side. This is known as rouleaux formation, and it occurs more often if the levels of certain serum proteins are elevated, as for instance during inflammation.

The spleen acts as a reservoir of red blood cells, but this effect is somewhat limited in humans. In some other mammals such as dogs and horses, the spleen sequesters large numbers of red blood cells that are dumped into the blood during times of exertion stress, yielding a higher oxygen transport capacity.

Vertebrate Erythrocytes

Erythrocytes consist mainly of hemoglobin, a complex molecule containing heme groups whose iron atoms temporarily link to oxygen molecules in the lungs or gills and release them throughout the body. Oxygen can easily diffuse through the red blood cell's cell membrane. Hemoglobin also carries some of the waste product carbon dioxide back from the tissues. (In humans, less than 2% of the total oxygen, and most of the carbon dioxide, is held in solution in the blood plasma). A related compound, myoglobin, acts to store oxygen in muscle cells.

The color of erythrocytes is due to the heme group of hemoglobin. The blood plasma is straw-colored alone, but the red blood cells change colors due to the state of the hemoglobin: when combined with oxygen the resulting oxyhemoglobin is scarlet and when oxygen has been released, the resulting deoxyhemoglobin is darker, appearing bluish through the blood vessel walls.

The keeping of oxygen-binding proteins in cells (rather than having them dissolved in body fluid) was an important step in the evolution of vertebrates; it allows for less viscous blood and longer transport ways of oxygen.