The association between naevi and melanoma in populations with different levels of sun exposure: a joint case-control study of melanoma in the UK and Australia.

Two case-control studies were set up to investigate the relationship between melanocytic naevi and risk of melanoma and to compare the naevus phenotype in two countries exposed to greatly different levels of sun exposure and different melanoma rates. In England 117 melanoma cases and 163 controls were recruited from the North-East Thames Region and 183 melanoma cases and 162 controls from New South Wales, Australia. Each subject underwent a whole-body naevus count performed by the same examiner in each country. Relative risks associated with melanocytic naevi in each country were calculated with comparison of naevus data in controls between Australia and England. Atypical naevi were strong risk factors for melanoma in both countries: the odds ratio (OR) for three or more atypical naevi was 4.6 (95% CI 2.0-10.7) in Australia compared with 51.7 (95% CI 6.5-408.4) in England. Common naevi were also significant risk factors in Australia and England with similar odds ratios in the two countries. Prevalence of atypical naevi was greater in Australian controls than in English controls: OR 9.7 (95% CI 1.2-81.7) for three or more atypical naevi in Australia compared with England. For young age groups, the median number of common naevi was greater in Australia than in the UK, whereas for older individuals this difference in naevi number between the two countries disappeared. The prevalence of naevi on non-sun-exposed sites in controls was not significantly different between the two countries. The atypical mole syndrome (AMS) phenotype was more prevalent in Australian controls (6%) than in English controls (2%). The results of this study support the role of sun exposure in the induction of atypical naevi in adults. There was a trend towards stronger risk factors associated with atypical naevi in England compared with Australia. The atypical mole syndrome, usually associated with a genetic susceptibility to melanoma, was more common in Australia than in England, suggesting genetic environmental interactions with the possibility of phenocopies induced by sunlight

Effect of age on melanoma risk, prognosis and treatment response

As for all types of cancer, the incidence of melanoma increases with age. However, naevus counts (the principal risk factor for melanoma) decrease with age; hence the relationship between ageing and melanoma is complex. Subjects who maintain a high naevus count after the age of 50 years are more likely to be affected by melanoma, as their lesions do not senesce. Longer telomere length, which is strongly related to age, is linked to high naevus counts/melanoma risk; thus melanoma biology is influenced by factors that slow down ageing. Age is also an important prognostic factor in melanoma. Increasing age leads to worse survival in stages I, II and III. Sentinel lymph node (SLN) status, which is a strong predictor of melanoma survival, is also affected by age, as SLN positivity decreases with age. However, the prognostic value of SLN on survival increases with age, so, again, these relationships are complex. In patients with stage IV melanoma, age impacts on survival because it affects responses to treatment. This review examines the effects of age on melanoma risk, prognostic factors and responses to treatment

Datocracy

Datocracy is a compound neologism that embraces transhistorical liberations and reconfigurations of data, in its multiple perceptual-linguistic forms, into new value relations and systems of governance, democratic or otherwise. Datocracy evolves from the often-violent separation of data from its habitual matrices, by virtue of dispositifs, or apparatuses, as defined by Michel Foucault and elaborated by Gilles Deleuze. This paper examines material examples of the functioning of such dispositifs through Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin, François Rabelais (through Mikhail Bakhtin), and William Burroughs. These examples demonstrate how emancipated data is readily recuperated into new relations of governance, as liberatory socio-political tools (or apparatuses), or vehicles of tyranny. In its passage between liberation and recuperation, in its state of utterance, perhaps, data experiences a protosemantic moment, a pre-definitional state, which offers the promise of a momentary escape from, or rather within, value relations

Negotiating the inhuman: Bakhtin, materiality and the instrumentalization of climate change

The article argues that the work of literary theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin presents a starting point for thinking about the instrumentalization of climate change. Bakhtin’s conceptualization of human–world relationships, encapsulated in the concept of ‘cosmic terror’, places a strong focus on our perception of the ‘inhuman’. Suggesting a link between the perceived alienness and instability of the world and in the exploitation of the resulting fear of change by political and religious forces, Bakhtin asserts that the latter can only be resisted if our desire for a false stability in the world is overcome. The key to this overcoming of fear, for him, lies in recognizing and confronting the worldly relations of the human body. This consciousness represents the beginning of one’s ‘deautomatization’ from following established patterns of reactions to predicted or real changes. In the vein of several theorists and artists of his time who explored similar ‘deautomatization’ strategies – examples include Shklovsky’s ‘ostranenie’, Brecht’s ‘Verfremdung’, Artaud’s emotional ‘cruelty’ and Bataille’s ‘base materialism’ – Bakhtin proposes a more playful and widely accessible experimentation to deconstruct our ‘habitual picture of the world’. Experimentation is envisioned to take place across the material and the textual to increase possibilities for action. Through engaging with Bakhtin’s ideas, this article seeks to draw attention to relations between the imagination of the world and political agency, and the need to include these relations in our own experiments with creating climate change awareness

Aqua­bis(3,5-dimethyl-1H-pyrazole-κN)(oxalato-κ2 O,O′)copper(II)

In the title compound, [Cu(C2O4)(C5H8N2)2(H2O)], the CuII atom is coordinated in a slightly distorted square-pyramidal geometry by two N atoms belonging to the two 3,5-dimethyl-1H-pyrazole ligands, two O atoms of the oxalate anion providing an O,O′-chelating coordination mode, and an O atom of the water mol­ecule occupying the apical position. The crystal packing shows a well defined layer structure. Intra-layer connections are realised through a system of hydrogen bonds while the nature of the inter-layer inter­actions is completely hydro­phobic, including no hydrogen-bonding inter­actions

A questionnaire to measure melanoma risk, knowledge and protective behaviour: Assessing content validity in a convenience sample of Scots and Australians

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