CANADA: The discovery of a new and surprising component of human hair will change the way we — and cosmetic companies — view our crowning glory.
A team of US and Brazilian researchers presented their discovery at the annual meeting of the American Crystallographic Association, held in Philadelphia.
Human hair has been extensively studied for decades, but until now, a complete understanding of its structure has proven elusive.
“Hair traditionally has been constituted of three regions: medulla (central part of the hair), cortex (biggest volume fraction of the hair) and the cuticle (external part of the hair),” says project leader Vesna Stanic, a scientist working at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Source.
“We discovered a new intermediate zone, which is in between the cuticle and cortex,” she says.Stanic and her team made the discovery by combining an ultra powerful submicron X-ray beam with cross-sectional geometry.
The original goal was to just study materials used in hair treatments, and how they affect hair. While doing this, Stanic wondered about the diffraction patterns of hair.
Diffraction is the bending of waves around obstacles and openings. X-ray diffraction patterns of a given material can therefore reveal the local arrangement of both molecular and atomic structures.
Diffraction patterns of human hair have been documented before, but they usually involved pointing the X-ray beam perpendicular to the hair fibre axis.
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