Image: Hill Street Studios / Getty ImagesShareTattoos are no longer taboo. One in every three Americans now has at least one tattoo. As getting inked becomes more common, potential risks and side effects are being more intensely scrutinized. Last year, a series of worrisome headlines suggested a link between tattoos and lymphoma. These scare stories were based on a study of 1,400 people with lymphoma and a control group of over 4,000 people without cancer.This studys authors claimed that their study showed that getting a tattoo increased risk, but their data actually suggested that any differences were not statistically significant. If tattoo ink did cause cancer, youd expect people who had more of their body tattooed to be at greater risk. Crucially, the authors did not find this. Even if the data were more convincing, the studys format makes it impossible to tell whether any link is causalthere could be factors that make people more likely to get lymphoma and tattoos.These health risks were overblown, but the study got me thinking about tattoo inkwhere does it go in our skin, and does it stay there?Where does tattoo ink go in our skin?When we get tattooed, the ink is deposited as a pigment in the dermis of our skin, explains dermatologist Dr. Lauren Ploch. This is below the top layer of skinthe epidermisbut above the skins fat. Cells in the dermis are replaced much more slowly than in the epidermis, which is why tattoos dont fade as we shed skin cells. Your first consideration before getting a tattoo should be needle hygiene. Unclean needles spread infection and disease.When tattoo ink enters your skin, your body recognizes it as foreign, says dermatologist Dr. Lauren Moy. That causes the body to recruit immune cells to the area. This is why newly tattooed skin can become inflamed or sensitive. In most cases, careful after-tattoo care can mitigate most of these reactions. This includes keeping the tattooed skin area clean, using moisturizer, and avoiding exposure to sun or water.The immune cells that flood into your newly tattooed skin include macrophagesspecialists in munching foreign molecules. These cells devour the pigment but struggle to break it down. This means the ink in our tattoos is distributed between skin and immune cells. When macrophages die, they release their contents, but that ink is rapidly eaten by other macrophages in the area. This capture and recapture process holds ink in place in the skin.But if your body has an allergic reaction to the ink, a red or pink thick, scaly area can form on your skin, says Ploch. Some of these allergic reactions are caused by immune cells called lymphocytes. Certain types of ink are more likely to provoke these pseudolymphomatous reactions. One study of 104 skin biopsies from people who had allergic reactions to their tattoos showed that 78 percent of the reactions involved red pigments. These responses can also occur months or years after the tattoo was inked.Can tattoo ink move out of the skin?Tattoo ink can technically move through the body, but it does not usually travel very far, explains Ploch. When ink does move, its because the immune system has broken the pigment down to a size where it can be fed into our lymphatic system, which drains into lymph nodes. This pigment breakdown contributes to the blurring or fading of the tattoo. Nevertheless, even pigment that has been smashed to bits by the immune system and shuttled out of the skin can still cause issues.A 2018 case study reported the case of a heavily tattooed cancer patient whose mastectomy went in an unexpected direction when her surgeons noted her lymph nodes had turned black. An incorrect diagnosis could have led to the woman being treated for malignant melanoma. Luckily, her doctors realized the color was caused by broken-down tattoo ink building up in the nodes. Their analysis showed the discoloration wasnt dangerous.A link to our ink?Pigment breakdown also happens when tattoos are removed. Most lasers on the market now essentially break apart the pigment into smaller pieces so that it can be cleared by our lymphatic systemquickly and more efficiently, says Ploch. This process, says Moy, releases chemicals like iron and zinc oxides from the pigment, which can cause further reactions.Ultimately, though, these reactions are generally mild, says Ploch. As for any cancer risk, Moy points out that any link between tattoos and cancer would have been noticed in our increasingly inked world. Ithink if tattoos were really that dire, we all wouldhave heard about it, she concludes.This story is part of Popular SciencesAsk Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something youve always wanted to know?Ask us.

The "Cosmic Horseshoe" is an Einstein ring, a system made up of a foreground galaxy whose mass is so great, it warps the light from a galaxy behind it. Now, astronomers know where it gets this mass from.

submitted by /u/Successful_Sink_1936 [link] [comments]

Re @LawSelfDefense @thevivafrei Really?

Star Wars: Republic Commando is celebrating its 20-year anniversary today, March 1, 2025. Below, we look at how its focus on military fiction was a sign of things to come to the Star Wars galaxy .When you boot up Star Wars: Republic Commando, the first thing you see is the LucasArts logo, fuzzy like a jammed radio signal. It flickers with the audio of muttered orders, of droid speak. This is an idea taken from the original Clone Wars cartoons (starting in 2003), which also opens with a distorted broadcast, in that case of blaster fire and blaring lightsabers. In tandem, these aesthetic flourishes represent a turn away from the science fantasy mythicism of Star Wars proper and a turn toward a grittier, though still exaggerated, military fiction.To be fair, it is not as if these impulses were not in Star Wars to begin with. Though A New Hope draws on the science fiction golden age idealism of Flash Gordan serials, it is a worn down future. Our heroes are would-be guerrilla militants, piloting buckets of bolts. Their fascist enemies reserve any futurist slickness. The fight of rebels is scrappy, hidden in trees and sequestered in backwater planets.Continue Reading at GameSpot

The annual Toy Fair expo has kicked off, and as you'd expect, Lego has a big presence at the convention. One of the new licensed sets revealed this weekend is the Avengers Endgame: Final Battle diorama, a new kit that captures one of the biggest moments from the final film in the Infinity Saga, where Earth's mightiest heroes and their allies band together in a last-ditch effort to stop Thanos from claiming the Infinity Gauntlet.This set lets you build a mini replica of the devastated Avengers headquarters where the exciting clash takes place. You'll also get mini figures of the heroes Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wanda Maximoff, Doctor Strange, Iron Spider, Black Panther, and Falcon, plus a Thanos figure to complete the scene. Lego Avengers Endgame Final Battle 3 Set Continue Reading at GameSpot

The Polish developerCD Projekt Redhas been busy with a lot of projects lately. Not only is the company making multiple Witcher games, including The Witcher 4, it is also working on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 under the codename Project Orion. For those who are out of the loop, Project Orion was originally announced in late 2022, just two years after the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. At the time, the confirmation of a sequel so shortly after the sci-fi RPG's debut was surprising to some fans, given that Cyberpunk 2077 had a notoriously disastrous launch and still wasn't in great shape in 2022. Since the game sold incredibly well, though, CD Projekt Red was probably confident enough in greenlighting a sequel.

The video game industry offers something for every type of gamer. Whether you enjoy role-playing games, PvP battles, or action-packed experiencesnot to mention the endless world of indie gamestheres no shortage of options. However, one genre that often gets overlooked is co-op gamesco-op story-driven games, to be precise.

17th of Feb - 23rd of FebThis week, the group organised and began writing the pitch document for our game, as well as set up means to transfer needed files between one another. We discussed roles and what work was expected of everyone for the coming week. We got movement, collision, and dash working, with only small bits of fine-tuning needed.I worked on the general shape of our sprites from different perspectives and their walking animation. I also designed and finalised the id