title: SAT

text: One of the proposed partial explanations for the gap between Asian- and European-American students in educational achievement, as measured for example by the SAT, is the general tendency of Asians to come from stable two-parent households. In their 2018 analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists Adam Blandin, Christopher Herrington, and Aaron Steelman concluded that family structure played an important role in determining educational outcomes in general and SAT scores in particular. Families with only one parent who has no degrees were designated 1L, with two parents but no degrees 2L, and two parents with at least one degree between them 2H. Children from 2H families held a significant advantage of those from 1L families, and this gap grew between 1990 and 2010. Because the median SAT composite scores (verbal and mathematics) for 2H families grew by 20 points while those of 1L families fell by one point, the gap between them increased by 21 points, or a fifth of one standard deviation.


title: SAT

text: Speaking to "The" "Wall Street Journal", family sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox stated, "In the absence of SAT scores, which can pinpoint kids from difficult family backgrounds with great academic potential, family stability is likely to loom even larger in determining who makes it past the college finish line in California [whose public university system decided to stop requiring SAT and ACT scores for admissions in 2020]."


title: SAT

text: In 2013, the American College Testing Board released a report stating that boys outperformed girls on the mathematics section of the test, a significant gap that has persisted for over 35 years. As of 2015, boys on average earned 32 points more than girls on the SAT mathematics section. Among those scoring in the 700-800 range, the male-to-female ratio was 1.6:1. In 2014, psychologist Stephen Ceci and his collaborators found boys did better than girls across the percentiles. For example, a girl scoring in the top 10% of her sex would only be in the top 20% among the boys. In 2010, psychologist Jonathan Wai and his colleagues showed, by analyzing data from three decades involving 1.6 million intellectually gifted seventh graders from the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP), that in the 1980s the gender gap in the mathematics section of the SAT among students scoring in the top 0.01% was 13.5:1 in favor of boys but dropped to 3.8:1 by the 1990s. The dramatic sex ratio from the 1980s replicates a different study using a sample from Johns Hopkins University. This ratio is similar to that observed for the ACT mathematics and science scores between the early 1990s and the late 2000s. It remained largely unaltered at the end of the 2000s. Sex differences in SAT mathematics scores began making themselves apparent at the level of 400 points and above.


title: SAT

text: Some researchers point to evidence in support of greater male variability in verbal and quantitative reasoning skills. Greater male variability has been found in body weight, height, and cognitive abilities across cultures, leading to a larger number of males in the lowest and highest distributions of testing. Consequently, a higher number of males are found in both the upper and lower extremes of the performance distributions of the mathematics sections of standardized tests such as the SAT, resulting in the observed gender discrepancy. Paradoxically, this is at odds with the tendency of girls to have higher classroom scores than boys, proving that they do not lack scholastic aptitude. However, boys tend to do better on standardized test questions not directly related to the curriculum.


title: SAT

text: On the other hand, Wai and his colleagues found that both sexes in the top 5% appeared to be more or less at parity when it comes to the verbal section of the SAT, though girls have gained a slight but noticeable edge over boys starting in the mid-1980s. Psychologist David Lubinski, who conducted longitudinal studies of seventh graders who scored exceptionally high on the SAT, found a similar result. Girls generally had better verbal reasoning skills and boys mathematical skills. This reflects other research on the cognitive ability of the general population rather than just the 95th percentile and up.


title: SAT

text: Although aspects of testing such as stereotype threat are a concern, research on the predictive validity of the SAT has demonstrated that it tends to be a more accurate predictor of female GPA in university as compared to male GPA.


title: SAT

text: Mathematical problems on the SAT can be broadly categorized into two groups: conventional and unconventional. Conventional problems can be handled routinely via familiar formulas or algorithms while unconventional ones require more creative thought in order to make unusual use of familiar methods of solution or to come up with the specific insights necessary for solving those problems. In 2000, ETS psychometrician Ann M. Gallagher and her colleagues analyzed how students handled disclosed SAT mathematics questions in self-reports. They found that for both sexes, the most favored approach was to use formulas or algorithms learned in class. When that failed, however, males were more likely than females to identify the suitable methods of solution. Previous research suggested that males were more likely to explore unusual paths to solution whereas females tended to stick to what they had learned in class and that females were more likely to identify the appropriate approaches if such required nothing more than mastery of classroom materials.


title: SAT

text: Older versions of the SAT did ask students how confident they were in their mathematical aptitude and verbal reasoning ability, specifically, whether or not they believed they were in the top 10%. Devin G. Pope analyzed data of over four million test takers from the late 1990s to the early 2000s and found that high scorers were more likely to be confident they were in the top 10%, with the top scorers reporting the highest levels of confidence. But there were some noticeable gaps between the sexes. Men tended to be much more confident in their mathematical aptitude than women. For example, among those who scored 700 on the mathematics section, 67% of men answered they believed they were in the top 10% whereas only 56% of women did the same. Women, on the other hand, were slightly more confident in their verbal reasoning ability than men.


title: SAT

text: Cognitive neuroscientists Richard Haier and Camilla Persson Benbow employed positron emission tomography (PET) scans to investigate the rate of glucose metabolism among students who have taken the SAT. They found that among men, those with higher SAT mathematics scores exhibited higher rates of glucose metabolism in the temporal lobes than those with lower scores, contradicting the brain-efficiency hypothesis. This trend, however, was not found among women, for whom the researchers could not find any cortical regions associated with mathematical reasoning. Both sexes scored the same on average in their sample and had the same rates of cortical glucose metabolism overall. According to Haier and Benbow, this is evidence for the structural differences of the brain between the sexes.


title: SAT

text: A 2001 meta-analysis of the results of 6,246,729 participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude found a difference in average scores between black and white students of around 1.0 standard deviation, with comparable results for the SAT (2.4 million test takers). Similarly, on average, Hispanic and Amerindian students perform on the order of one standard deviation lower on the SAT than white and Asian students. Mathematics appears to be the more difficult part of the exam. In 1996, the black-white gap in the mathematics section was 0.91 standard deviations, but by 2020, it fell to 0.79. In 2013, Asian Americans as a group scored 0.38 standard deviations higher than whites in the mathematics section.


title: SAT

text: Some researchers believe that the difference in scores is closely related to the overall achievement gap in American society between students of different racial groups. This gap may be explainable in part by the fact that students of disadvantaged racial groups tend to go to schools that provide lower educational quality. This view is supported by evidence that the black-white gap is higher in cities and neighborhoods that are more racially segregated. Other research cites poorer minority proficiency in key coursework relevant to the SAT (English and math), as well as peer pressure against students who try to focus on their schoolwork ("acting white"). Cultural issues are also evident among black students in wealthier households, with high achieving parents. John Ogbu, a Nigerian-American professor of anthropology, concluded that instead of looking to their parents as role models, black youth chose other models like rappers and did not make an effort to be good students.


title: SAT

text: One set of studies has reported differential item functioning, namely, that some test questions function differently based on the racial group of the test taker, reflecting differences in ability to understand certain test questions or to acquire the knowledge required to answer them between groups. In 2003, Freedle published data showing that black students have had a slight advantage on the verbal questions that are labeled as difficult on the SAT, whereas white and Asian students tended to have a slight advantage on questions labeled as easy. Freedle argued that these findings suggest that "easy" test items use vocabulary that is easier to understand for white middle class students than for minorities, who often use a different language in the home environment, whereas the difficult items use complex language learned only through lectures and textbooks, giving both student groups equal opportunities to acquiring it. The study was severely criticized by the ETS board, but the findings were replicated in a subsequent study by Santelices and Wilson in 2010.


title: SAT

text: There is no evidence that SAT scores systematically underestimate future performance of minority students. However, the predictive validity of the SAT has been shown to depend on the dominant ethnic and racial composition of the college. Some studies have also shown that African-American students under-perform in college relative to their white peers with the same SAT scores; researchers have argued that this is likely because white students tend to benefit from social advantages outside of the educational environment (for example, high parental involvement in their education, inclusion in campus academic activities, positive bias from same-race teachers and peers) which result in better grades.


title: SAT

text: Christopher Jencks concludes that as a group, African Americans have been harmed by the introduction of standardized entrance exams such as the SAT. This, according to him, is not because the tests themselves are flawed, but because of labeling bias and selection bias; the tests measure the skills that African Americans are less likely to develop in their socialization, rather than the skills they are more likely to develop. Furthermore, standardized entrance exams are often labeled as tests of general ability, rather than of certain aspects of ability. Thus, a situation is produced in which African-American ability is consistently underestimated within the education and workplace environments, contributing in turn to selection bias against them which exacerbates underachievement.


title: SAT

text: Among the major racial or ethnic groups of the United States, gaps in SAT mathematics scores are the greatest at the tails, with Hispanic and Latino Americans being the most likely to score at the lowest range and Asian Americans the highest. In addition, there is some evidence suggesting that if the test contains more questions of both the easy and difficult varieties, which would increase the variability of the scores, the gaps would be even wider. Given the distribution for Asians, for example, many could score higher than 800 if the test allowed them to. (See figure below.)


title: SAT

text: 2020 was the year in which education worldwide was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and indeed, the performance of students in the United States on standardized tests, such as the SAT, suffered. Yet the gaps persisted. According to the College Board, in 2020, while 83% of Asian students met the benchmark of college readiness in reading and writing and 80% in mathematics, only 44% and 21% of black students did those respective categories. Among whites, 79% met the benchmark for reading and writing and 59% did mathematics. For Hispanics and Latinos, the numbers were 53% and 30%, respectively. (See figure below.)


title: SAT

text: By analyzing data from the National Center for Education Statistics, economists Ember Smith and Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution deduced that the number of students taking the SAT increased at a rate faster than population and high-school graduation growth rates between 2000 and 2020. The increase was especially pronounced among Hispanics and Latinos. Even among whites, whose number of high-school graduates was shrinking, the number of SAT takers rose. In 2015, for example, 1.7 million students took the SAT, up from 1.6 million in 2013. But in 2019, a record-breaking 2.2 million students took the exam, compared to 2.1 million in 2018, another record-breaking year. The rise in the number of students taking the SAT was due in part to many school districts offering to administer the SAT during school days often at no further costs to the students. However, in 2021, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the optional status of the SAT at many colleges and universities, only 1.5 million students took the test. But this number went up to 1.7 million in 2022, as ambitious students took the test in order to make themselves stand out from the competition.


title: SAT

text: Psychologists Jean Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Ryne A. Sherman analyzed vocabulary test scores on the U.S. General Social Survey (formula_1) and found that after correcting for education, the use of sophisticated vocabulary has declined between the mid-1970s and the mid-2010s across all levels of education, from below high school to graduate school. However, they cautioned against the use of SAT verbal scores to track the decline for while the College Board reported that SAT verbal scores had been decreasing, these scores were an imperfect measure of the vocabulary level of the nation as a whole because the test-taking demographic has changed and because more students took the SAT in the 2010s than in the 1970s, meaning there were more with limited ability who took it. However, as the frequency of reading for pleasure and the level of reading comprehension among American high-school students continue to decline, students who take the SAT might struggle to do well, even if reforms have been introduced to shorten the duration of the test and to reduce the number of questions associated with a given passage in the verbal portion of the test.


title: SAT

text: Certain high IQ societies, like Mensa, Intertel, the Prometheus Society and the Triple Nine Society, use scores from certain years as one of their admission tests. For instance, Intertel accepts scores (verbal and math combined) of at least 1300 on tests taken through January 1994; the Triple Nine Society accepts scores of 1450 or greater on SAT tests taken before April 1995, and scores of at least 1520 on tests taken between April 1995 and February 2005. Mensa accepts qualifying SAT scores earned on or before January 31, 1994.


title: SAT

text: Because it is strongly correlated with general intelligence, the SAT has often been used as a proxy to measure intelligence by researchers, especially since 2004. In particular, scientists studying mathematically gifted individuals have been using the mathematics section of the SAT to identify subjects for their research.


title: SAT

text: A growing body of research indicates that SAT scores can predict individual success decades into the future, for example in terms of income and occupational achievements. A longitudinal study published in 2005 by educational psychologists Jonathan Wai, David Lubinski, and Camilla Benbow suggests that among the intellectually precocious (the top 1%), those with higher scores in the mathematics section of the SAT at the age of 12 were more likely to earn a PhD in the STEM fields, to have a publication, to register a patent, or to secure university tenure. Wai further showed that an individual's academic ability, as measured by the average SAT or ACT scores of the institution attended, predicted individual differences in income, even among the richest people of all, and being a member of the 'American elite', namely Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaires, federal judges, and members of Congress. Wai concluded that the American elite was also the cognitive elite. Gregory Park, Lubinski, and Benbow gave statistical evidence that intellectually gifted adolescents, as identified by SAT scores, could be expected to accomplish great feats of creativity in the future, both in the arts and in STEM.


title: SAT

text: The SAT is sometimes given to students at age 12 or 13 by organizations such as the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) to select, study, and mentor students of exceptional ability, that is, those in the top one percent. Among SMPY participants, those within the top quartile, as indicated by the SAT composite score (mathematics and verbal), were markedly more likely to have a doctoral degree, to have at least one publication in STEM, to earn income in the 95th percentile, to have at least one literary publication, or to register at least one patent than those in the bottom quartile. Duke TIP participants generally picked career tracks in STEM should they be stronger in mathematics, as indicated by SAT mathematics scores, or the humanities if they possessed greater verbal ability, as indicated by SAT verbal scores. For comparison, the bottom SMPY quartile is five times more likely than the average American to have a patent. Meanwhile, as of 2016, the shares doctorates among SMPY participants was 44% and Duke TIP 37%, compared to two percent among the general U.S. population. Consequently, the notion that beyond a certain point, differences in cognitive ability as measured by standardized tests such as the SAT cease to matter is gainsaid by the evidence.


title: SAT

text: In the 2010 paper which showed that the sex gap in SAT mathematics scores had dropped dramatically between the early 1980s and the early 1990s but had persisted for the next two decades or so, Wai and his colleagues argued that "sex differences in abilities in the extreme right tail should not be dismissed as no longer part of the explanation for the dearth of women in math-intensive fields of science."


title: SAT

text: Cognitive ability is correlated with job training outcomes and job performance. As such, some employers rely on SAT scores to assess the suitability of a prospective recruit, especially if the person has limited work experience. There is nothing new about this practice. Major companies and corporations have spent princely sums on learning how to avoid hiring errors and have decided that standardized test scores are a valuable tool in deciding whether or not a person is fit for the job. In some cases, a company might need to hire someone to handle proprietary materials of its own making, such as computer software. But since the ability to work with such materials cannot be assessed via external certification, it makes sense for such a firm to rely on something that is a proxy of measuring general intelligence. In other cases, a firm may not care about academic background but needs to assess a prospective recruit's quantitative reasoning ability, and what makes standardized test scores necessary. Several companies, especially those considered to be the most prestigious in industries such as investment banking and management consulting such as Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, have been reported to ask prospective job candidates about their SAT scores. According to the "Wall Street Journal", the scores are used similarly to how they are in college admissions, in that companies claim they provide insight into the intellectual capabilities and problem-solving skills of an individual.


title: SAT

text: Nevertheless, some other top employers, such as Google, have eschewed the use of SAT or other standardized test scores unless the potential employee is a recent graduate because for their purposes, these scores "don't predict anything." Educational psychologist Jonathan Wai suggested this might be due to the inability of the SAT to differentiate the intellectual capacities of those at the extreme right end of the distribution of intelligence. Wai told "The New York Times", "Today the SAT is actually too easy, and that's why Google doesn't see a correlation. Every single person they get through the door is a super-high scorer."


title: SAT

text: In 2002, "New York Times" columnist Richard Rothstein argued that the U.S. math averages on the SAT and ACT continued their decade-long rise over national verbal averages on the tests while the averages verbal portions on the same tests were floundering.


title: SAT

text: In the 1960s and 1970s there was a movement to drop achievement scores. After a period of time, the countries, states and provinces that reintroduced them agreed that academic standards had dropped, students had studied less, and had taken their studying less seriously. They reintroduced the tests after studies and research concluded that the high-stakes tests produced benefits that outweighed the costs.


title: SAT

text: In a 2001 speech to the American Council on Education, Richard C. Atkinson, the president of the University of California, urged the dropping admissions tests such as the SAT I but not achievement tests such as the SAT II as a college admissions requirement. Atkinson's critique of the predictive validity and powers of the SAT has been contested by the University of California academic senate. In April 2020, the academic senate, which consisted of faculty members, voted 51–0 to restore the requirement of standardized test scores. However, the governing board overruled the senate. Because of the size of the Californian population, this decision might have an impact on U.S. higher education at large; schools looking to admit Californian students could have harder time.


title: SAT

text: During the 2010s, over 1,230 American universities and colleges opted to stop requiring the SAT and the ACT for admissions, according to FairTest, an activist group opposing standardized entrance exams. Most, however, were small colleges, with the notable exceptions of the University of California system and the University of Chicago. Also on the list are institutions catering to niche students, such as religious colleges, arts music conservatories, or nursing schools, and the majority of institutions in the Northeastern United States. On one hand, making the SAT and the ACT optional for admissions enables schools to attract a larger pool of applicants of a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. On the other hand, letters of recommendation are not a good indicator of collegiate performance, and grade inflation is a genuine problem. If standardized tests were taken out of the picture, school grades would become more important, thereby incentivizing grade inflation. In fact, grades in American high schools have been inflating by noticeable amounts due to pressure from parents, creating an apparent oversupply of high achievers that makes actual high-performing students struggle to stand out, especially if they are from low-income families. Schools that made the SAT optional therefore lose an objective measure of academic aptitude and readiness, and they will have to formulate a new methodology for admissions or to develop their own entrance exams. Given that the selectivity of a school a student applies to is correlated with the resources of his or her high school—measured in terms of the availability of rigorous courses, such as AP classes, and the socioeconomic statuses of the student body—, making the SAT optional might exacerbate social inequities. Furthermore, since the costs of attending institutions of higher learning in the United States are high, eliminating the SAT requirement could make said institutions more likely to admit under-performing students, who might have to be removed for their low academic standing and who might be saddled with debt after attending. Another criticism of making the SAT optional is that subjective measures of an applicant's suitability, such as application essays, could become more important, making it easier for the rich to gain admissions at the expense of the poor because their school counselors are more capable of writing good letters of recommendation and they could afford hire external help to boost their applications. It was due to these concerns that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided to reinstate its SAT requirement in 2022.


title: SAT

text: Despite the fallout from Operation Varsity Blues, which found many wealthy parents illegally intervening to raise their children's standardized test scores, the SAT and the ACT remain popular among American parents and college-bound seniors, who are skeptical of the process of "holistic admissions" because they think is rather vague and uncertain, as schools try to access characteristics not easily discerned via a number, hence the growth in the number of test takers attempting to make themselves more competitive even if this parallels an increase in the number of schools declaring it optional. Holistic admissions notwithstanding, when merit-based scholarships are considered, standardized test scores might be the tiebreakers, as these are highly competitive. Scholarships and financial aid could help students and their parents significantly cut the cost of higher education, especially in times of economic hardship. Moreover, the most selective of schools might have no better options than using standardized test scores in order to quickly prune the number of applications worth considering, for holistic admissions consume valuable time and other resources.


title: SAT

text: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, around 1,600 institutions decided to waive the requirement of the SAT or the ACT for admissions because it was challenging both to administer and to take these tests, resulting in many cancellations. Some schools chose to make them optional on a temporary basis only, either for just one year, as in the case of Princeton University, or three, like the College of William & Mary. Others dropped the requirement completely. Some schools extended their moratorium on standardized entrance exams in 2021. This did not stop highly ambitious students from taking them, however, as many parents and teenagers were skeptical of the "optional" status of university entrance exams and wanted to make their applications more likely to catch the attention of admission officers. This led to complaints of registration sites crashing in the summer of 2020. On the other hand, the number of students applying to the more competitive of schools that had made SAT and ACT scores optional increased dramatically because the students thought they stood a chance. Ivy League institutions saw double-digit increases in the number of applications, as high as 51% in the case of Columbia University, while their admission rates, already in the single digits, fell, e.g. from 4.9% in 2020 to just 3.4% in 2021 at Harvard University. At the same time, interest in lower-status schools that did the same thing dropped precipitously. In all, 44% of students who used the Common Application—accepted by over 900 colleges and universities as of 2021—submitted SAT or ACT scores in 2020–21, down from 77% in 2019–20. Those who did submit their test scores tended to hail from high-income families, to have at least one university-educated parent, and to be white or Asian.


title: SAT

text: In 2005, MIT Writing Director Les Perelman plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found a high correlation between them. After studying over 50 graded essays, he found that longer essays consistently produced higher scores. In fact, he argues that by simply gauging the length of an essay without reading it, the given score of an essay could likely be determined correctly over 90% of the time. He also discovered that several of these essays were full of factual errors; the College Board does not claim to grade for factual accuracy.


title: SAT

text: Perelman, along with the National Council of Teachers of English, also criticized the 25-minute writing section of the test for damaging standards of writing teaching in the classroom. They say that writing teachers training their students for the SAT will not focus on revision, depth, accuracy, but will instead produce long, formulaic, and wordy pieces. "You're getting teachers to train students to be bad writers", concluded Perelman.


title: SAT

text: On January 19, 2021, the College Board announced that the SAT would no longer offer the optional essay section after the June 2021 administration.


title: SAT

text: The College Board, the non-profit organization that owns the SAT, was organized at the beginning of the 20th century to provide uniform entrance exams for its member colleges, whose matriculating students often came from boarding and private day schools found in the Northeastern United States. The exams were essay-based, graded by hand, and required several days for the student to take them. By the early 1920s, the increasing interest in intelligence tests as a means of selection convinced the College Board to form a commission to produce such a test for college admission purposes. The leader of the commission was Carl Brigham, a psychologist at Princeton University, who originally saw the value of these types of tests through the lens of eugenic thought.


title: SAT

text: In June, 1926, the first SAT, then known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, was administered to about 8,000 students, many of whom were applying to Yale University and Smith College. In 1934, James Conant and Henry Chauncey used the SAT as a means to identify recipients, besides those from the traditional northeastern private schools, for scholarships to Harvard University. By 1942, the College Board suspended the use of the essay exams, replacing them with the SAT, due in part to the success of Harvard's SAT program as well as because of the contraints from the onset of World War II. At this time, the SAT was standardized so that a test score received by a student in one year could be directly compared to a score received by a student in another year. Test scores ranged from 200 to 800 on each of two test sections (verbal and math) and the same reference group of students was used to standardize the SAT until 1995.


title: SAT

text: After the war, due to several factors including the formation of the Educational Testing Service, the use of the SAT increased rapidly: by 1951, about 80,000 SATs were taken, rising to about 1.5 million in 1971. During this time, changes made to the content of the SAT were relatively minor, and included the introduction of sentence completion questions and "quantitative comparison" math questions as well as changes in the timing of the test. In 1994, however, the SAT was substantially changed in an attempt to make the test more closely reflect the work done by students in school and the skills that they would need in college. Among other changes, antonym questions were removed from the verbal section, and free response questions were added to the math section along with the use of calculators. In 1995, after nearly forty years of declining scores, the SAT was recalibrated by the addition of approximately 100 points to each score to compensate for the decline in what constituted an average score.


title: SAT

text: In 2005, the SAT was changed again, in part due to criticism of the test by the University of California system, which said that the test was not closely enough aligned to high school curricula. Along with the elimination of analogies from the verbal section and quantitative comparison items from the math section, a new writing section with an essay was added. The changes introduced an additional section score, increasing the maximum SAT score to 2400.


title: SAT

text: In early 2016, the SAT would change again in the interest of alignment with typical high school curricula. The changes included making the essay optional (and returning the maximum score to 1600), changing all multiple-choice questions from having five answer options to four, and the removal of penalty for wrong answers (rights-only scoring). The essay was completely removed from the SAT by mid-2021, in the interest of reducing demands on students in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: SAT

text: In January 2022, College Board announced that the SAT would be administered digitally to all test takers by 2024. The digital format of the test is expected to be shorter than the current paper-based test and will allow scores to be determined in a matter of days rather than weeks.


title: SAT

text: The SAT has been renamed several times since its introduction in 1926. It was originally known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In 1990, a commission set up by the College Board to review the proposed changes to the SAT program recommended that the meaning of the initialism SAT be changed to "Scholastic Assessment Test" because a "test that integrates measures of achievement as well as developed ability can no longer be accurately described as a test of aptitude". In 1993, the College Board changed the name of the test to SAT I: Reasoning Test; at the same time, the name of the Achievement Tests was changed to SAT II: Subject Tests. The Reasoning Test and Subject Tests were to be collectively known as the Scholastic Assessment Tests. According to the president of the College Board at the time, the name change was meant "to correct the impression among some people that the SAT measures something that is innate and impervious to change regardless of effort or instruction." The new SAT debuted in March 1994, and was referred to as the Scholastic Assessment Test by major news organizations. However, in 1997, the College Board announced that the SAT could not properly be called the Scholastic Assessment Test, and that the letters SAT did not stand for anything. In 2004, the Roman numeral in SAT I: Reasoning Test was dropped, making SAT Reasoning Test the name of the SAT. The "Reasoning Test" portion of the name was eliminated following the exam's 2016 redesign; it is now simply called the SAT.


title: SAT

text: The College Board has been accused of completely reusing old SAT papers previously given in the United States. The recycling of questions from previous exams has been exploited to allow for cheating on exams and impugned the validity of some students' test scores, according to college officials. Test preparation companies in Asia have been found to provide test questions to students within hours of a new SAT exam's administration.


title: SAT

text: On August 25, 2018, the SAT test given in America was discovered to be a recycled October 2017 international SAT test given in China. The leaked PDF file was on the internet before the August 25, 2018 exam.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria (; Ancient Greek: ὁ Φάρος τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας, ), was a lighthouse built by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (280–247 BC). It has been estimated to have been at least in overall height. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for many centuries it was one of the tallest man-made structures in the world.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The lighthouse was severely damaged by three earthquakes between 956 and 1323 AD and became an abandoned ruin. It was the third-longest surviving ancient wonder (after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the extant Great Pyramid of Giza), surviving in part until 1480, when the last of its remnant stones were used to build the Citadel of Qaitbay on the site.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: In 1994, a team of French archaeologists dove into the water of Alexandria's Eastern Harbour and discovered some remains of the lighthouse on the sea floor. In 2016 the Ministry of State of Antiquities in Egypt had plans to turn submerged ruins of ancient Alexandria, including those of the Pharos, into an underwater museum.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: Pharos was a small island located on the western edge of the Nile Delta. In 332 BC Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria on an isthmus opposite Pharos. Alexandria and Pharos were later connected by a mole spanning more than , which was called the "Heptastadion" ("seven stadia"—a "stadion" was a Greek unit of length measuring approximately 180 m).


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The etymology of “Pharos” is uncertain. The word became generalized in modern Greek (φάρος ‘fáros’), and was loaned into Spanish (‘faro’).


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The east side of the mole became the Great Harbour, now an open bay; on the west side lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos now vastly enlarged to form the modern harbour. Today's city development lying between the present Grand Square and the modern Ras el-Tin quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras el-Tin promontory, where Ras el-Tin Palace was built in the 19th century, represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the lighthouse at its eastern point having been weathered away by the sea.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The lighthouse was constructed in the third century BC. After Alexander the Great died, the first Ptolemy (Ptolemy I Soter) declared himself king in 305 BC, and commissioned its construction shortly thereafter. The building was finished during the reign of his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and took twelve years to complete at a total cost of 800 talents of silver. The light was produced by a furnace at the top, and the tower was said to have been built mostly with solid blocks of limestone and granite.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: In his encyclopedic manuscript "Geographica", Strabo, who visited Alexandria in the late first century BC, reported that Sostratus of Cnidus had a dedication to the "Saviour Gods" inscribed in metal letters on the lighthouse. Writing in the first century AD, Pliny the Elder stated in his "Natural History" that Sostratus was the architect, although this conclusion is disputed. In his second century AD educational treatise "How to Write History", Lucian claimed that Sostratus hid his name under plaster which bore the name of Ptolemy, so that when the plaster eventually fell off, Sostratus's name would be visible in the stone. The blocks of sandstone and limestone used in the construction of the lighthouse have been scientifically analysed in order to discover where they originated, with mineralogical and chemical analysis pointing to the Wadi Hammamat quarries, which are located in the desert to the east of Alexandria.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: Arab descriptions of the lighthouse are consistent despite it undergoing several repairs after earthquake damage. Given heights vary only fifteen percent from  , on a square base.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The Arab authors indicate that the lighthouse was constructed from large blocks of light-coloured stone. The tower was made up of three tapering tiers: a lower square section with a central core; a middle octagonal section; and, at the top, a circular section. Al-Masudi wrote in the 10th century that the seaward-facing side featured an inscription dedicated to Zeus. Geographer Al-Idrisi visited the lighthouse in 1154 and noted openings in the walls throughout the rectangular shaft with lead used as a filling agent in between the masonry blocks at the base. He reckoned the total height of the lighthouse to be 300 dhira rashashl (162 m).


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: At its apex was a mirror which reflected sunlight during the day; a fire was lit at night. Extant Roman coins struck by the Alexandrian mint show that a statue of Triton was positioned on each of the building's four corners, and a statue of Poseidon or Zeus stood atop.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The fullest description of the lighthouse comes from Arab traveler Abou Haggag Youssef Ibn Mohammed el-Balawi el-Andaloussi, who visited Alexandria in 1166 AD. Balawi provided description and measurement of the interior of the lighthouse's rectangular shaft. The inner ramp was described as roofed with masonry at 7 shibr (189 cm, 6.2 ft) noted as to allow two horsemen to pass at once. In clockwise rotation, the ramp held four stories with eighteen, fourteen, and seventeen rooms on the second, third, and fourth floors, respectively. Balawi accounted the base of the lighthouse to be 45 ba (30 m, 100 ft) long on each side with connecting ramp 600 dhira (300 m, 984 ft) long by 20 dhira (10 m, 32 ft) wide. The octangle section is accounted at 24 ba (16.4 m, 54 ft) in width, and the diameter of the cylindrical section is accounted at 12.73 ba (8.7 m, 28.5 ft). The apex of the lighthouse's oratory was measured with diameter 6.4 ba (4.3 m 20.9 ft).


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: Late accounts of the lighthouse after the destruction by the 1303 Crete earthquake include Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar and explorer, who passed through Alexandria in 1326 and 1349. Battuta noted that the wrecked condition of the lighthouse was then only noticeable by the rectangle tower and entrance ramp. He stated the tower to be 140 shibr (30.8 m, 101 ft) on either side. Battuta detailed Sultan An-Nasir Muhammad's plan to build a new lighthouse near the site of the collapsed one, but these went unfulfilled after the Sultan's death in 1341.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The lighthouse was partially cracked and damaged by earthquakes in 796 and 951, followed by structural collapse in the earthquake of 956, and then again in 1303 and 1323. Earthquakes propagate from two well known tectonic boundaries, the African–Arabian and Red Sea Rift zones, respectively 350 and 520 km from the lighthouse's location. Documentation shows the 956 earthquake to be the first to cause structural collapse of the top 20+ metres of the construction. Documented repairs after the 956 earthquake include the installment of an Islamic-style dome after the collapse of the statue that previously topped the monument. The most destructive earthquake in 1303 was an estimated intensity of VIII+ originating from the Greek island of Crete (280–350 km from Alexandria). Finally, the stubby remnant disappeared in 1480, when the then-Sultan of Egypt, Qaitbay, built a medieval fort on the larger platform of the lighthouse site using some of the fallen stone.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The 10th-century writer al-Mas'udi reports a legendary tale on the lighthouse's destruction, according to which at the time of Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan () the Byzantines sent a eunuch agent, who adopted Islam, gained the Caliph's confidence and secured permission to search for hidden treasure at the base of the lighthouse. The search was cunningly made in such a manner that the foundations were undermined, and the Pharos collapsed. The agent managed to escape in a ship waiting for him.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: Gaston Jondet made in 1916 the first detailed description of the submerged ruins of the old port of Alexandria. He was followed by Raymond Weill in the same year, and by Sir Leopold Halliday Savile in 1940.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: In 1968, the lighthouse was rediscovered. UNESCO sponsored an expedition to send a team of marine archaeologists, led by Honor Frost, to the site. She confirmed the existence of ruins representing part of the lighthouse. Due to the lack of specialized archaeologists and the area becoming a military zone, exploration was put on hold.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: A team of French archaeologists led by Jean-Yves Empereur re-discovered the physical remains of the lighthouse in late 1994 on the floor of Alexandria's Eastern Harbour. He worked with cinematographer Asma el-Bakri who used a 35 mm camera to capture the first underwater pictures of the scattered remains of collapsed columns and statues. Empereur's most significant findings consisted of blocks of granite 49–60 tonnes in mass often broken into multiple pieces, 30 sphinxes, 5 obelisks and columns with carvings dating back to Ramses II (1279–1213 BC). The cataloging of over 3,300 pieces was completed by Empereur and his team at the end of 1995 using a combination of photography and mapping. Thirty-six pieces of Empereur's granite blocks and other discoveries have been restored and are currently on display in Alexandria museums. Subsequent satellite imaging has revealed further remains. In the early 1990s, the underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio began exploration at the opposite side of the harbor from where Empereur's team had worked. Subsequent satellite and sonar imaging has revealed the additional remains of wharves, houses and temples which had all fallen into the Mediterranean sea as a result of earthquakes and other natural disasters. It is possible to go diving and see the ruins. The secretariat of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage is currently working with the Government of Egypt on an initiative to add the Bay of Alexandria (including the remains of the lighthouse) to a World Heritage List of submerged cultural sites.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: Legend has it that the people of the island of Pharos were wreckers; hence, Ptolemy I Soter had the lighthouse built to help guide ships into port at night.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: "Pharos" became the etymological origin of the word "lighthouse" in Greek ("φάρος"), many Romance languages such as French ("phare"), Italian and Spanish ("faro") – and thence into Esperanto ("faro") – Catalan, Romanian ("far") and Portuguese ("farol"), as well as Swedish and Danish ("fyr"), and even some Slavic languages like Bulgarian ("far"). In French, Portuguese, Turkish, Serbian and Russian, a derived word means "headlight" ("phare", "farol", "far", "фар", "фара").


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: Since 1978 a number of proposals have been made to replace the lighthouse with a modern reconstruction. In 2015, the Egyptian government and the Alexandria governorate suggested building a skyscraper on the site of the lighthouse as part of the regeneration of the eastern harbour of Alexandria Port.


title: Lighthouse of Alexandria

text: The lighthouse remains a civic symbol of the city of Alexandria and of the Alexandria Governorate with which the city is more or less coterminous. A stylised representation of the lighthouse appears on the flag and seal of the Governorate and on many public services of the city, including the seal of Alexandria University.


title: Bank

text: A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.


title: Bank

text: Because banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords.


title: Bank

text: Banking in its modern sense evolved in the fourteenth century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but in many ways functioned as a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in the ancient world. In the history of banking, a number of banking dynasties notably, the Medicis, the Fuggers, the Welsers, the Berenbergs, and the Rothschilds have played a central role over many centuries. The oldest existing retail bank is Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (founded in 1472), while the oldest existing merchant bank is Berenberg Bank (founded in 1590).


title: Bank

text: The concept of banking may have begun in the times of ancient Assyria and Babylonia with merchants offering loans of grain as collateral within a barter system. Lenders in ancient Greece and during the Roman Empire added two important innovations: they accepted deposits and changed money. Archaeology from this period in Iran, ancient China and India also shows evidence of money lending.


title: Bank

text: The present era of banking can be traced to medieval and early Renaissance Italy, to the rich cities in the centre and north like Florence, Lucca, Siena, Venice and Genoa. The Bardi and Peruzzi families dominated banking in 14th-century Florence, establishing branches in many other parts of Europe. Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici set up one of the most famous Italian banks, the Medici Bank, in 1397. The Republic of Genoa founded the earliest-known state deposit bank, Banco di San Giorgio (Bank of St. George), in 1407 at Genoa, Italy.


title: Bank

text: Fractional reserve banking and the issue of banknotes emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries. Merchants started to store their gold with the goldsmiths of London, who possessed private vaults, and who charged a fee for that service. In exchange for each deposit of precious metal, the goldsmiths issued receipts certifying the quantity and purity of the metal they held as a bailee; these receipts could not be assigned, only the original depositor could collect the stored goods.


title: Bank

text: Gradually the goldsmiths began to lend money out on behalf of the depositor, and promissory notes (which evolved into banknotes) were issued for money deposited as a loan to the goldsmith. Thus by the 19th century we find in ordinary cases of deposits of money with banking corporations, or bankers, the transaction amounts to a mere loan or "mutuum", and the bank is to restore, not the same money, but an equivalent sum, whenever it is demanded


title: Bank

text: and money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal (see Parker v. Marchant, 1 Phillips 360); it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to return an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it.


title: Bank

text: The goldsmith paid interest on deposits. Since the promissory notes were payable on demand, and the advances (loans) to the goldsmith's customers were repayable over a longer time-period, this was an early form of fractional reserve banking. The promissory notes developed into an assignable instrument which could circulate as a safe and convenient form of money


title: Bank

text: allowing goldsmiths to advance loans with little risk of default. Thus the goldsmiths of London became the forerunners of banking by creating new money based on credit.


title: Bank

text: The Bank of England originated the permanent issue of banknotes in 1695. The Royal Bank of Scotland established the first overdraft facility in 1728. By the beginning of the 19th century Lubbock's Bank had established a bankers' clearing house in London to allow multiple banks to clear transactions. The Rothschilds pioneered international finance on a large scale, financing the purchase of shares in the Suez canal for the British government in 1875.


title: Bank

text: The word" bank" was taken into Middle English from Middle French "banque", from Old Italian "banca", meaning "table", from Old High German "banc, bank" "bench, counter". Benches were used as makeshift desks or exchange counters during the Renaissance by Florentine bankers, who used to make their transactions atop desks covered by green tablecloths.


title: Bank

text: The definition of a bank varies from country to country. See the relevant country pages for more information.


title: Bank

text: Under English common law, a banker is defined as a person who carries on the business of banking by conducting current accounts for their customers, paying cheques drawn on them and also collecting cheques for their customers.


title: Bank

text: In most common law jurisdictions there is a Bills of Exchange Act that codifies the law in relation to negotiable instruments, including cheques, and this Act contains a statutory definition of the term "banker": "banker" includes a body of persons, whether incorporated or not, who carry on the business of banking' (Section 2, Interpretation). Although this definition seems circular, it is actually functional, because it ensures that the legal basis for bank transactions such as cheques does not depend on how the bank is structured or regulated.


title: Bank

text: The business of banking is in many common law countries not defined by statute but by common law, the definition above. In other English common law jurisdictions there are statutory definitions of the "business of banking" or "banking business". When looking at these definitions it is important to keep in mind that they are defining the business of banking for the purposes of the legislation, and not necessarily in general. In particular, most of the definitions are from legislation that has the purpose of regulating and supervising banks rather than regulating the actual business of banking. However, in many cases, the statutory definition closely mirrors the common law one. Examples of statutory definitions:


title: Bank

text: Since the advent of EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale), direct credit, direct debit and internet banking, the cheque has lost its primacy in most banking systems as a payment instrument. This has led legal theorists to suggest that the cheque based definition should be broadened to include financial institutions that conduct current accounts for customers and enable customers to pay and be paid by third parties, even if they do not pay and collect cheques .


title: Bank

text: Banks act as payment agents by conducting checking or current accounts for customers, paying cheques drawn by customers in the bank, and collecting cheques deposited to customers' current accounts. Banks also enable customer payments via other payment methods such as Automated Clearing House (ACH), Wire transfers or telegraphic transfer, EFTPOS, and automated teller machines (ATMs).


title: Bank

text: Banks borrow money by accepting funds deposited on current accounts, by accepting term deposits, and by issuing debt securities such as banknotes and bonds. Banks lend money by making advances to customers on current accounts, by making installment loans, and by investing in marketable debt securities and other forms of money lending.


title: Bank

text: Banks provide different payment services, and a bank account is considered indispensable by most businesses and individuals. Non-banks that provide payment services such as remittance companies are normally not considered as an adequate substitute for a bank account.


title: Bank

text: Banks issue new money when they make loans. In contemporary banking systems, regulators set a minimum level of reserve funds that banks must hold against the deposit liabilities created by the funding of these loans, in order to ensure that the banks can meet demands for payment of such deposits. These reserves can be acquired through the acceptance of new deposits, sale of other assets, or borrowing from other banks including the central bank.


title: Bank

text: Activities undertaken by banks include personal banking, corporate banking, investment banking, private banking, transaction banking, insurance, consumer finance, trade finance and other related.


title: Bank

text: A bank can generate revenue in a variety of different ways including interest, transaction fees and financial advice. Traditionally, the most significant method is via charging interest on the capital it lends out to customers. The bank profits from the difference between the level of interest it pays for deposits and other sources of funds, and the level of interest it charges in its lending activities.


title: Bank

text: This difference is referred to as the spread between the cost of funds and the loan interest rate. Historically, profitability from lending activities has been cyclical and dependent on the needs and strengths of loan customers and the stage of the economic cycle. Fees and financial advice constitute a more stable revenue stream and banks have therefore placed more emphasis on these revenue lines to smooth their financial performance.


title: Bank

text: In the past 20 years, American banks have taken many measures to ensure that they remain profitable while responding to increasingly changing market conditions.


title: Bank

text: Recently, as banks have been faced with pressure from fintechs, new and additional business models have been suggested such as freemium, monetisation of data, white-labeling of banking and payment applications, or the cross-selling of complementary products.


title: Bank

text: Banks face a number of risks in order to conduct their business, and how well these risks are managed and understood is a key driver behind profitability, and how much capital a bank is required to hold. Bank capital consists principally of equity, retained earnings and subordinated debt.


title: Bank

text: The capital requirement is a bank regulation, which sets a framework within which a bank or depository institution must manage its balance sheet. The categorisation of assets and capital is highly standardised so that it can be risk weighted.


title: Bank

text: After the financial crisis of 2007–2008, regulators force banks to issue "Contingent convertible bonds" (CoCos). These are hybrid capital securities that absorb losses in accordance with their contractual terms when the capital of the issuing bank falls below a certain level. Then debt is reduced and bank capitalisation gets a boost. Owing to their capacity to absorb losses, CoCos have the potential to satisfy regulatory capital requirement.


title: Bank

text: Banks are susceptible to many forms of risk which have triggered occasional systemic crises. These include liquidity risk (where many depositors may request withdrawals in excess of available funds), credit risk (the chance that those who owe money to the bank will not repay it), and interest rate risk (the possibility that the bank will become unprofitable, if rising interest rates force it to pay relatively more on its deposits than it receives on its loans).


title: Bank

text: Banking crises have developed many times throughout history when one or more risks have emerged for the banking sector as a whole. Prominent examples include the bank run that occurred during the Great Depression, the U.S. Savings and Loan crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Japanese banking crisis during the 1990s, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the 2000s.


title: Bank

text: Assets of the largest 1,000 banks in the world grew by 6.8% in the 2008–2009 financial year to a record US$96.4 trillion while profits declined by 85% to US$115 billion. Growth in assets in adverse market conditions was largely a result of recapitalisation. EU banks held the largest share of the total, 56% in 2008–2009, down from 61% in the previous year. Asian banks' share increased from 12% to 14% during the year, while the share of US banks increased from 11% to 13%. Fee revenue generated by global investment in banking totalled US$66.3 billion in 2009, up 12% on the previous year.


title: Bank

text: The United States has the most banks in the world in terms of institutions (5,330 as of 2015) and possibly branches (81,607 as of 2015). This is an indicator of the geography and regulatory structure of the US, resulting in a large number of small to medium-sized institutions in its banking system. As of November 2009, China's top four banks have in excess of 67,000 branches (ICBC:18000+, BOC:12000+, CCB:13000+, ABC:24000+) with an additional 140 smaller banks with an undetermined number of branches.


title: Bank

text: Japan had 129 banks and 12,000 branches. In 2004, Germany, France, and Italy each had more than 30,000 branches – more than double the 15,000 branches in the United Kingdom.


title: Bank

text: Between 1985 and 2018 banks engaged in around 28,798 mergers or acquisitions, either as the acquirer or the target company. The overall known value of these deals cumulates to around 5,169 bil. USD. In terms of value, there have been two major waves (1999 and 2007) which both peaked at around 460 bil. USD followed by a steep decline (-82% from 2007 until 2018).


title: Bank

text: Here is a list of the largest deals in history in terms of value with participation from at least one bank:


title: Bank

text: Currently, commercial banks are regulated in most jurisdictions by government entities and require a special bank license to operate.


title: Bank

text: Usually, the definition of the business of banking for the purposes of regulation is extended to include acceptance of deposits, even if they are not repayable to the customer's order – although money lending, by itself, is generally not included in the definition.


title: Bank

text: Unlike most other regulated industries, the regulator is typically also a participant in the market, being either publicly or privately governed central bank. Central banks also typically have a monopoly on the business of issuing banknotes. However, in some countries, this is not the case. In the UK, for example, the Financial Services Authority licenses banks, and some commercial banks (such as the Bank of Scotland) issue their own banknotes in addition to those issued by the Bank of England, the UK government's central bank.


title: Bank

text: Banking law is based on a contractual analysis of the relationship between the "bank" (defined above) and the "customer" – defined as any entity for which the bank agrees to conduct an account.


title: Bank

text: These implied contractual terms may be modified by express agreement between the customer and the bank. The statutes and regulations in force within a particular jurisdiction may also modify the above terms and/or create new rights, obligations, or limitations relevant to the bank-customer relationship.


title: Bank

text: Some types of financial institutions, such as building societies and credit unions, may be partly or wholly exempt from bank license requirements, and therefore regulated under separate rules.


title: Bank

text: Most banks are profit-making, private enterprises. However, some are owned by the government, or are non-profit organisations.


title: Bank

text: The United States banking industry is one of the most heavily regulated and guarded in the world, with multiple specialised and focused regulators. All banks with FDIC-insured deposits have the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as a regulator. However, for soundness examinations (i.e., whether a bank is operating in a sound manner), the Federal Reserve is the primary federal regulator for Fed-member state banks; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is the primary federal regulator for national banks. State non-member banks are examined by the state agencies as well as the FDIC. National banks have one primary regulator – the OCC.


title: Bank

text: Each regulatory agency has its own set of rules and regulations to which banks and thrifts must adhere.


title: Bank

text: The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) was established in 1979 as a formal inter-agency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions. Although the FFIEC has resulted in a greater degree of regulatory consistency between the agencies, the rules and regulations are constantly changing.


title: Bank

text: In addition to changing regulations, changes in the industry have led to consolidations within the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OTS, and OCC. Offices have been closed, supervisory regions have been merged, staff levels have been reduced and budgets have been cut. The remaining regulators face an increased burden with an increased workload and more banks per regulator. While banks struggle to keep up with the changes in the regulatory environment, regulators struggle to manage their workload and effectively regulate their banks. The impact of these changes is that banks are receiving less hands-on assessment by the regulators, less time spent with each institution, and the potential for more problems slipping through the cracks, potentially resulting in an overall increase in bank failures across the United States.


title: Bank

text: The changing economic environment has a significant impact on banks and thrifts as they struggle to effectively manage their interest rate spread in the face of low rates on loans, rate competition for deposits and the general market changes, industry trends and economic fluctuations. It has been a challenge for banks to effectively set their growth strategies with the recent economic market. A rising interest rate environment may seem to help financial institutions, but the effect of the changes on consumers and businesses is not predictable and the challenge remains for banks to grow and effectively manage the spread to generate a return to their shareholders.


title: Bank

text: The management of the banks’ asset portfolios also remains a challenge in today's economic environment. Loans are a bank's primary asset category and when loan quality becomes suspect, the foundation of a bank is shaken to the core. While always an issue for banks, declining asset quality has become a big problem for financial institutions.


title: Bank

text: There are several reasons for this, one of which is the lax attitude some banks have adopted because of the years of “good times.” The potential for this is exacerbated by the reduction in the regulatory oversight of banks and in some cases depth of management. Problems are more likely to go undetected, resulting in a significant impact on the bank when they are discovered. In addition, banks, like any business, struggle to cut costs and have consequently eliminated certain expenses, such as adequate employee training programs.


title: Bank

text: Banks also face a host of other challenges such as ageing ownership groups. Across the country, many banks’ management teams and boards of directors are ageing. Banks also face ongoing pressure from shareholders, both public and private, to achieve earnings and growth projections. Regulators place added pressure on banks to manage the various categories of risk. Banking is also an extremely competitive industry. Competing in the financial services industry has become tougher with the entrance of such players as insurance agencies, credit unions, cheque cashing services, credit card companies, etc.


title: Bank

text: As a reaction, banks have developed their activities in financial instruments, through financial market operations such as brokerage and have become big players in such activities.


title: Bank

text: Another major challenge is the ageing infrastructure, also called legacy IT. Backend systems were built decades ago and are incompatible with new applications. Fixing bugs and creating interfaces costs huge sums, as knowledgeable programmers become scarce.


title: Bank

text: To be able to provide home buyers and builders with the funds needed, banks must compete for deposits. The phenomenon of disintermediation had to dollars moving from savings accounts and into direct market instruments such as U.S. Department of Treasury obligations, agency securities, and corporate debt. One of the greatest factors in recent years in the movement of deposits was the tremendous growth of money market funds whose higher interest rates attracted consumer deposits.


title: Bank

text: Bank statements are accounting records produced by banks under the various accounting standards of the world. Under GAAP there are two kinds of accounts: debit and credit. Credit accounts are Revenue, Equity and Liabilities. Debit Accounts are Assets and Expenses. The bank credits a "credit account" to increase its balance, and debits a "credit account" to decrease its balance.


title: Bank

text: The customer debits his or her savings/bank (asset) account in his ledger when making a deposit (and the account is normally in debit), while the customer credits a credit card (liability) account in his ledger every time he spends money (and the account is normally in credit). When the customer reads his bank statement, the statement will show a credit to the account for deposits, and debits for withdrawals of funds. The customer with a positive balance will see this balance reflected as a credit balance on the bank statement. If the customer is overdrawn, he will have a negative balance, reflected as a debit balance on the bank statement.


title: Bank

text: One source of deposits for banks is brokers who deposit large sums of money on behalf of investors through trust corporations. This money will generally go to the banks which offer the most favourable terms, often better than those offered local depositors. It is possible for a bank to engage in business with no local deposits at all, all funds being brokered deposits. Accepting a significant quantity of such deposits, or "hot money" as it is sometimes called, puts a bank in a difficult and sometimes risky position, as the funds must be lent or invested in a way that yields a return sufficient to pay the high interest being paid on the brokered deposits. This may result in risky decisions and even in eventual failure of the bank. Banks which failed during 2008 and 2009 in the United States during the global financial crisis had, on average, four times more brokered deposits as a percent of their deposits than the average bank. Such deposits, combined with risky real estate investments, factored into the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Regulation of brokered deposits is opposed by banks on the grounds that the practice can be a source of external funding to growing communities with insufficient local deposits. There are different types of accounts: saving, recurring and current accounts.


title: Bank

text: Custodial accounts are accounts in which assets are held for a third party. For example, businesses that accept custody of funds for clients prior to their conversion, return, or transfer may have a custodial account at a bank for these purposes.


title: Bank

text: In modern times there have been huge reductions to the barriers of global competition in the banking industry. Increases in telecommunications and other financial technologies, such as Bloomberg, have allowed banks to extend their reach all over the world since they no longer have to be near customers to manage both their finances and their risk. The growth in cross-border activities has also increased the demand for banks that can provide various services across borders to different nationalities.


title: Bank

text: However, despite these reductions in barriers and growth in cross-border activities, the banking industry is nowhere near as globalised as some other industries. In the US, for instance, very few banks even worry about the Riegle–Neal Act, which promotes more efficient interstate banking. In the vast majority of nations around the globe, the market share for foreign owned banks is currently less than a tenth of all market shares for banks in a particular nation.


title: Bank

text: One reason the banking industry has not been fully globalised is that it is more convenient to have local banks provide loans to small businesses and individuals. On the other hand, for large corporations, it is not as important in what nation the bank is in since the corporation's financial information is available around the globe.


title: Melanoma

text: Melanoma, also redundantly known as malignant melanoma, is a type of skin cancer that develops from the pigment-producing cells known as melanocytes. Melanomas typically occur in the skin, but may rarely occur in the mouth, intestines, or eye (uveal melanoma). In women, they most commonly occur on the legs, while in men, they most commonly occur on the back. About 25% of melanomas develop from moles. Changes in a mole that can indicate melanoma include an increase in size, irregular edges, change in color, itchiness, or skin breakdown.


title: Melanoma

text: The primary cause of melanoma is ultraviolet light (UV) exposure in those with low levels of the skin pigment melanin. The UV light may be from the sun or other sources, such as tanning devices. Those with many moles, a history of affected family members, and poor immune function are at greater risk. A number of rare genetic conditions, such as xeroderma pigmentosum, also increase the risk. Diagnosis is by biopsy and analysis of any skin lesion that has signs of being potentially cancerous.


title: Melanoma

text: Using sunscreen and avoiding UV light may prevent melanoma. Treatment is typically removal by surgery. In those with slightly larger cancers, nearby lymph nodes may be tested for spread (metastasis). Most people are cured if spread has not occurred. For those in whom melanoma has spread, immunotherapy, biologic therapy, radiation therapy, or chemotherapy may improve survival. With treatment, the five-year survival rates in the United States are 99% among those with localized disease, 65% when the disease has spread to lymph nodes, and 25% among those with distant spread. The likelihood that melanoma will reoccur or spread depends on its thickness, how fast the cells are dividing, and whether or not the overlying skin has broken down.


title: Melanoma

text: Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer. Globally, in 2012, it newly occurred in 232,000 people. In 2015, 3.1 million people had active disease, which resulted in 59,800 deaths. Australia and New Zealand have the highest rates of melanoma in the world. High rates also occur in Northern Europe and North America, while it is less common in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the United States, melanoma occurs about 1.6 times more often in men than women. Melanoma has become more common since the 1960s in areas mostly populated by people of European descent.


title: Melanoma

text: Early signs of melanoma are changes to the shape or color of existing moles or, in the case of nodular melanoma, the appearance of a new lump anywhere on the skin. At later stages, the mole may itch, ulcerate, or bleed. Early signs of melanoma are summarized by the mnemonic "ABCDEF":


title: Melanoma

text: Metastatic melanoma may cause nonspecific paraneoplastic symptoms, including loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. Metastasis (spread) of early melanoma is possible, but relatively rare; less than a fifth of melanomas diagnosed early become metastatic. Brain metastases are particularly common in patients with metastatic melanoma. It can also spread to the liver, bones, abdomen, or distant lymph nodes.


title: Melanoma

text: Melanomas are usually caused by DNA damage resulting from exposure to UV light from the sun. Genetics also play a role. Melanoma can also occur in skin areas with little sun exposure (i.e. mouth, soles of feet, palms of hands, genital areas). People with dysplastic nevus syndrome, also known as familial atypical multiple mole melanoma, are at increased risk for the development of melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: Having more than 50 moles indicates an increased risk melanoma might arise. A weakened immune system makes cancer development easier due to the body's weakened ability to fight cancer cells.


title: Melanoma

text: The UV radiation from tanning beds increases the risk of melanoma. The International Agency for Research on Cancer finds that tanning beds are "carcinogenic to humans" and that people who begin using tanning devices before the age of thirty years are 75% more likely to develop melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: Those who work in airplanes also appear to have an increased risk, believed to be due to greater exposure to UV.


title: Melanoma

text: UVB light (wavelengths between 315 and 280 nm) from the sun is absorbed by skin cell DNA and results in a type of direct DNA damage called cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers. Thymine, cytosine, or cytosine-thymine dimers are formed by the joining of two adjacent pyrimidine bases within a DNA strand. Somewhat similarly to UVB, UVA light (longer wavelengths between 400 and 315 nm) from the sun or from tanning beds can also be directly absorbed by skin DNA (at about 1/100 to 1/1000 of the efficiency of UVB).


title: Melanoma

text: Exposure to radiation (UVA and UVB) is one of the major contributors to the development of melanoma. Occasional extreme sun exposure (resulting in "sunburn") is causally related to melanoma. Melanoma is most common on the back in men and on legs in women (areas of intermittent sun exposure). The risk appears to be strongly influenced by socioeconomic conditions rather than indoor versus outdoor occupations; it is more common in professional and administrative workers than unskilled workers. Other factors are mutations in or total loss of tumor suppressor genes. Use of sunbeds (with deeply penetrating UVA rays) has been linked to the development of skin cancers, including melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: Possible significant elements in determining risk include the intensity and duration of sun exposure, the age at which sun exposure occurs, and the degree of skin pigmentation. Melanoma rates tend to be highest in countries settled by migrants from Northern Europe which have a large amount of direct, intense sunlight to which the skin of the settlers is not adapted, most notably Australia. Exposure during childhood is a more important risk factor than exposure in adulthood. This is seen in migration studies in Australia.


title: Melanoma

text: Having multiple severe sunburns increases the likelihood that future sunburns develop into melanoma due to cumulative damage. The sun and tanning beds are the main sources of UV radiation that increase the risk for melanoma and living close to the equator increases exposure to UV radiation.


title: Melanoma

text: A number of rare mutations, which often run in families, greatly increase melanoma susceptibility. Several genes increase risks. Some rare genes have a relatively high risk of causing melanoma; some more common genes, such as a gene called "MC1R" that causes red hair, have a relatively lower elevated risk. Genetic testing can be used to search for the mutations.


title: Melanoma

text: One class of mutations affects the gene "CDKN2A". An alternative reading frame mutation in this gene leads to the destabilization of p53, a transcription factor involved in apoptosis and in 50% of human cancers. Another mutation in the same gene results in a nonfunctional inhibitor of CDK4, a cyclin-dependent kinase that promotes cell division. Mutations that cause the skin condition xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) also increase melanoma susceptibility. Scattered throughout the genome, these mutations reduce a cell's ability to repair DNA. Both CDKN2A and XP mutations are highly penetrant (the chances of a carrier to express the phenotype is high).


title: Melanoma

text: Familial melanoma is genetically heterogeneous, and loci for familial melanoma appear on the chromosome arms 1p, 9p and 12q. Multiple genetic events have been related to melanoma's pathogenesis (disease development). The multiple tumor suppressor 1 (CDKN2A/MTS1) gene encodes p16INK4a – a low-molecular weight protein inhibitor of cyclin-dependent protein kinases (CDKs) – which has been localised to the p21 region of human chromosome 9. FAMMM is typically characterized by having 50 or more combined moles in addition to a family history of melanoma. It is transmitted autosomal dominantly and mostly associated with the "CDKN2A" mutations. People who have CDKN2A mutation associated FAMMM have a 38 fold increased risk of pancreatic cancer.


title: Melanoma

text: Other mutations confer lower risk, but are more common in the population. People with mutations in the "MC1R" gene are two to four times more likely to develop melanoma than those with two wild-type (typical unaffected type) copies. "MC1R" mutations are very common, and all red-haired people have a mutated copy. Mutation of the "MDM2" SNP309 gene is associated with increased risks for younger women.


title: Melanoma

text: Fair- and red-haired people, persons with multiple atypical nevi or dysplastic nevi and persons born with giant congenital melanocytic nevi are at increased risk.


title: Melanoma

text: A family history of melanoma greatly increases a person's risk, because mutations in several genes have been found in melanoma-prone families. People with a history of one melanoma are at increased risk of developing a second primary tumor.


title: Melanoma

text: Fair skin is the result of having less melanin in the skin, which means less protection from UV radiation exists. A family history could indicate a genetic predisposition to melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: The earliest stage of melanoma starts when melanocytes begin out-of-control growth. Melanocytes are found between the outer layer of the skin (the epidermis) and the next layer (the dermis). This early stage of the disease is called the radial growth phase, when the tumor is less than 1 mm thick, and spreads at the level of the basal epidermis. Because the cancer cells have not yet reached the blood vessels deeper in the skin, it is very unlikely that this early-stage melanoma will spread to other parts of the body. If the melanoma is detected at this stage, then it can usually be completely removed with surgery.


title: Melanoma

text: When the tumor cells start to move in a different direction – vertically up into the epidermis and into the papillary dermis – cell behaviour changes dramatically.


title: Melanoma

text: The next step in the evolution is the invasive radial growth phase, in which individual cells start to acquire invasive potential. From this point on, melanoma is capable of spreading. The Breslow's depth of the lesion is usually less than , while the Clark level is usually 2.


title: Melanoma

text: The vertical growth phase (VGP) following is invasive melanoma. The tumor becomes able to grow into the surrounding tissue and can spread around the body through blood or lymph vessels. The tumor thickness is usually more than , and the tumor involves the deeper parts of the dermis.


title: Melanoma

text: The host elicits an immunological reaction against the tumor during the VGP, which is judged by the presence and activity of the tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). These cells sometimes completely destroy the primary tumor; this is called regression, which is the latest stage of development. In certain cases, the primary tumor is completely destroyed and only the metastatic tumor is discovered. About 40% of human melanomas contain activating mutations affecting the structure of the B-Raf protein, resulting in constitutive signaling through the Raf to MAP kinase pathway.


title: Melanoma

text: An insult common to most cancers is damage to DNA. UVA light mainly causes thymine dimers. UVA also produces reactive oxygen species and these inflict other DNA damage, primarily single-strand breaks, oxidized pyrimidines and the oxidized purine 8-oxoguanine (a mutagenic DNA change) at 1/10, 1/10, and 1/3rd the frequencies of UVA-induced thymine dimers, respectively.


title: Melanoma

text: If unrepaired, CPD photoproducts can lead to mutations by inaccurate translesion synthesis during DNA replication or repair. The most frequent mutations due to inaccurate synthesis past CPDs are cytosine to thymine (C>T) or CC>TT transition mutations. These are commonly referred to as UV fingerprint mutations, as they are the most specific mutation caused by UV, being frequently found in sun-exposed skin, but rarely found in internal organs. Errors in DNA repair of UV photoproducts, or inaccurate synthesis past these photoproducts, can also lead to deletions, insertions, and chromosomal translocations.


title: Melanoma

text: The entire genomes of 25 melanomas were sequenced. On average, about 80,000 mutated bases (mostly C>T transitions) and about 100 structural rearrangements were found per melanoma genome. This is much higher than the roughly 70 mutations across generations (parent to child). Among the 25 melanomas, about 6,000 protein-coding genes had missense, nonsense, or splice site mutations. The transcriptomes of over 100 melanomas has also been sequenced and analyzed. Almost 70% of all human protein-coding genes are expressed in melanoma. Most of these genes are also expressed in other normal and cancer tissues, with some 200 genes showing a more specific expression pattern in melanoma compared to other forms of cancer. Examples of melanoma specific genes are tyrosinase, MLANA, and "PMEL".


title: Melanoma

text: UV radiation causes damage to the DNA of cells, typically thymine dimerization, which when unrepaired can create mutations in the cell's genes. This strong mutagenic factor makes cutaneous melanoma the tumor type with the highest number of mutations. When the cell divides, these mutations are propagated to new generations of cells. If the mutations occur in protooncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, the rate of mitosis in the mutation-bearing cells can become uncontrolled, leading to the formation of a tumor. Data from patients suggest that aberrant levels of activating transcription factor in the nucleus of melanoma cells are associated with increased metastatic activity of melanoma cells; studies from mice on skin cancer tend to confirm a role for activating transcription factor-2 in cancer progression.


title: Melanoma

text: Large-scale studies, such as The Cancer Genome Atlas, have characterized recurrent somatic alterations likely driving initiation and development of cutaneous melanoma. The Cancer Genome Atlas study has established four subtypes : "BRAF" mutant, "RAS" mutant, "NF1" mutant, and triple wild-type.


title: Melanoma

text: The most frequent mutation occurs in the 600th codon of "BRAF" (50% of cases). "BRAF" is normally involved in cell growth, and this specific mutation renders the protein constitutively active and independent of normal physiological regulation, thus fostering tumor growth. RAS genes (NRAS, HRAS and KRAS) are also recurrently mutated (30% of TCGA cases) and mutations in the 61st or 12th codons trigger oncogenic activity. Loss-of-function mutations often affect tumor suppressor genes such as NF1, TP53 and CDKN2A. Other oncogenic alterations include fusions involving various kinases such as BRAF, RAF1, ALK, RET, ROS1, NTRK1., NTRK3 and MET" BRAF, RAS", and "NF1" mutations and kinase fusions are remarkably mutually exclusive, as they occur in different subsets of patients. Assessment of mutation status can, therefore, improve patient stratification and inform targeted therapy with specific inhibitors.


title: Melanoma

text: The research done by Sarna's team proved that heavily pigmented melanoma cells have Young's modulus about 4.93, when in non-pigmented ones it was only 0.98. In another experiment they found that elasticity of melanoma cells is important for its metastasis and growth: non-pigmented tumors were bigger than pigmented and it was much easier for them to spread. They shown that there are both pigmented and non-pigmented cells in melanoma tumors, so that they can both be drug-resistant and metastatic.


title: Melanoma

text: Looking at the area in question is the most common method of suspecting a melanoma. Moles that are irregular in color or shape are typically treated as candidates. To detect melanomas (and increase survival rates), it is recommended to learn to recognize them (see "ABCDE" mnemonic), to regularly examine moles for changes (shape, size, color, itching or bleeding) and to consult a qualified physician when a candidate appears.


title: Melanoma

text: However, many melanomas present as lesions smaller than 6 mm in diameter, and all melanomas are malignant when they first appear as a small dot. Physicians typically examine all moles, including those less than 6 mm in diameter. Seborrheic keratosis may meet some or all of the ABCD criteria, and can lead to false alarms. Doctors can generally distinguish seborrheic keratosis from melanoma upon examination or with dermatoscopy.


title: Melanoma

text: Some advocate replacing "enlarging" with "evolving": moles that change and evolve are a concern. Alternatively, some practitioners prefer "elevation". Elevation can help identify a melanoma, but lack of elevation does not mean that the lesion is not a melanoma. Most melanomas in the US are detected before they become elevated. By the time elevation is visible, they may have progressed to the more dangerous invasive stage.


title: Melanoma

text: In-person inspection of suspicious skin lesions is more accurate than visual inspection of images of suspicious skin lesions. When used by trained specialists, dermoscopy is more helpful to identify malignant lesions than use of the naked eye alone. Reflectance confocal microscopy may have better sensitivity and specificity than dermoscopy in diagnosing cutaneous melanoma but more studies are needed to confirm this result.


title: Melanoma

text: One method is the "ugly duckling sign". Correlation of common lesion characteristics is made. Lesions that deviate from the common characteristics are labeled an "ugly duckling", and a further professional exam is required. The "Little Red Riding Hood" sign suggests that individuals with fair skin and light-colored hair might have difficult-to-diagnose amelanotic melanomas. Extra care is required when examining such individuals, as they might have multiple melanomas and severely dysplastic nevi. A dermatoscope must be used to detect "ugly ducklings", as many melanomas in these individuals resemble nonmelanomas or are considered to be "wolves in sheep's clothing". These fair-skinned individuals often have lightly pigmented or amelanotic melanomas that do not present easy-to-observe color changes and variations. Their borders are often indistinct, complicating visual identification without a dermatoscope.


title: Melanoma

text: Amelanotic melanomas and melanomas arising in fair-skinned individuals are very difficult to detect, as they fail to show many of the characteristics in the ABCD rule, break the "ugly duckling" sign, and are hard to distinguish from acne scarring, insect bites, dermatofibromas, or lentigines.


title: Melanoma

text: Following a visual examination and a dermatoscopic exam, or "in vivo" diagnostic tools such as a confocal microscope, the doctor may biopsy the suspicious mole. A skin biopsy performed under local anesthesia is often required to assist in making or confirming the diagnosis and in defining severity. Elliptical excisional biopsies may remove the tumor, followed by histological analysis and Breslow scoring. Incisional biopsies such as punch biopsies are usually contraindicated in suspected melanomas, because of the possibility of sampling error or local implantation causing misestimation of tumour thickness. However, fears that such biopsies may increase the risk of metastatic disease seem unfounded.


title: Melanoma

text: Total body photography, which involves photographic documentation of as much body surface as possible, is often used during follow-up for high-risk patients. The technique has been reported to enable early detection and provides a cost-effective approach (with any digital camera), but its efficacy has been questioned due to its inability to detect macroscopic changes. The diagnosis method should be used in conjunction with (and not as a replacement for) dermoscopic imaging, with a combination of both methods appearing to give extremely high rates of detection.


title: Melanoma

text: A melanoma "in situ" has not invaded beyond the basement membrane, whereas an "invasive melanoma" has spread beyond it.


title: Melanoma

text: Some histopathological types of melanoma are inherently invasive, including nodular melanoma and lentigo maligna melanoma, where the "in situ" counterpart to lentigo maligna melanoma is lentigo maligna. Lentigo maligna is sometimes classified as a very early melanoma, and sometimes a precursor to melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: Superficial spreading melanomas and acral lentiginous melanomas can be either "in situ" or invasive, but acral lentiginous melanomas are almost always invasive.


title: Melanoma

text: Metastatic melanomas can be detected by X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, PET and PET/CTs, ultrasound, LDH testing and photoacoustic detection. However, there is lack of evidence in the accuracy of staging of people with melanoma with various imaging methods.


title: Melanoma

text: Older systems include "Clark level" and "Breslow's depth", quantifying microscopic depth of tumor invasion.


title: Melanoma

text: Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) tests are often used to screen for metastases, although many patients with metastases (even end-stage) have a normal LDH; extraordinarily high LDH often indicates the metastatic spread of the disease to the liver.


title: Melanoma

text: It is common for patients diagnosed with melanoma to have chest X-rays and an LDH test, and in some cases CT, MRI, and/or PET scans. Although controversial, sentinel lymph node biopsies and examination of the lymph nodes are also performed in patients to assess spread to the lymph nodes. A diagnosis of melanoma is supported by the presence of the S-100 protein marker.


title: Melanoma

text: HMB-45 is a monoclonal antibody that reacts against an antigen present in melanocytic tumors such as melanomas. It is used in anatomic pathology as a marker for such tumors. The antibody was generated to an extract of melanoma. It reacts positively against melanocytic tumors but not other tumors, thus demonstrating specificity and sensitivity. The antibody also reacts positively against junctional nevus cells but not intradermal nevi, and against fetal melanocytes but not normal adult melanocytes.


title: Melanoma

text: HMB-45 is nonreactive with almost all non-melanoma human malignancies, with the exception of rare tumors showing evidence of melanogenesis (e.g., pigmented schwannoma, clear cell sarcoma) or tumors associated with tuberous sclerosis complex (angiomyolipoma and lymphangiomyoma).


title: Melanoma

text: Minimizing exposure to sources of ultraviolet radiation (the sun and sunbeds), following sun protection measures and wearing sun protective clothing (long-sleeved shirts, long trousers, and broad-brimmed hats) can offer protection.


title: Melanoma

text: Using artificial light for tanning was once believed to help prevent skin cancers, but it can actually lead to an increased incidence of melanomas.


title: Melanoma

text: UV nail lamps, which are used in nail salons to dry nail polish, are another common and widespread source of UV radiation that could be avoided. Although the risk of developing skin cancer through UV nail lamp use is low, it is still recommended to wear fingerless gloves and/or apply SPF 30 or greater sunscreen to the hands before using a UV nail lamp.


title: Melanoma

text: The body uses UV light to generate vitamin D so there is a need to balance getting enough sunlight to maintain healthy vitamin D levels and reducing the risk of melanoma; it takes around a half-hour of sunlight for the body to generate its vitamin D for the day and this is about the same amount of time it takes for fair-skinned people to get a sunburn. Exposure to sunlight can be intermittent instead of all at one time.


title: Melanoma

text: Sunscreen appears to be effective in preventing melanoma. In the past, use of sunscreens with a sun protection factor (SPF) rating of 50 or higher on exposed areas were recommended; as older sunscreens more effectively blocked UVA with higher SPF. Currently, newer sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, zinc oxide, and titanium dioxide) effectively block both UVA and UVB even at lower SPFs. Sunscreen also protects against squamous cell carcinoma, another skin cancer.


title: Melanoma

text: A 2005 review found tentative evidence that statin and fibrate medication may decrease the risk of melanoma. A 2006 review however did not support any benefit.


title: Melanoma

text: Confirmation of the clinical diagnosis is done with a skin biopsy. This is usually followed up with a wider excision of the scar or tumor. Depending on the stage, a sentinel lymph node biopsy may be performed. Controversy exists around trial evidence for sentinel lymph node biopsy; with unclear evidence of benefit as of 2015. Treatment of advanced malignant melanoma is performed from a multidisciplinary approach.


title: Melanoma

text: Excisional biopsies may remove the tumor, but further surgery is often necessary to reduce the risk of recurrence. Complete surgical excision with adequate surgical margins and assessment for the presence of detectable metastatic disease along with short- and long-term followup is standard. Often this is done by a wide local excision (WLE) with margins. Melanoma-in-situ and lentigo malignas are treated with narrower surgical margins, usually . Many surgeons consider the standard of care for standard excision of melanoma-in-situ, but margin might be acceptable for margin controlled surgery (Mohs surgery, or the double-bladed technique with margin control). The wide excision aims to reduce the rate of tumor recurrence at the site of the original lesion. This is a common pattern of treatment failure in melanoma. Considerable research has aimed to elucidate appropriate margins for excision with a general trend toward less aggressive treatment during the last decades. A 2009 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found a small difference in survival rates favoring wide excision of primary cutaneous melanomas, but these results were not statistically significant.