The family of a little boy in Florida who was born with a partially formed skull has created a foundation to honor their son and raise money for research of the incurable condition that threatens his life.

Jaxon Buell, of Orlando, Fla., was born Aug. 27, 2014, and was diagnosed at birth with microhydranencephaly, a developmental abnormality  marked by incomplete brain and skull formation. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists don’t know what causes the condition nor have they found a cure.

The Buells have said they faced criticism for not aborting their son, but today, 20-month-old Jaxon has defied the odds to celebrate many of the milestones typical of a boy his age. As he has grown, Jaxon’s family has updated supporters on

“We keep waiting for it to kind of disappear and Jaxon be a 'flavor of the week'— but [the media attention] is not going away,” Brandon Buell said at the time. “It is surreal, it’s humbling, overwhelming and odd to be about our family and our son, but he certainly deserves it.”

A Brazilian man with elephantiasis, a rare condition in which people's limbs become discolored and swell to enormous sizes, was recently featured on the popular Animal Planet show "River Monsters," which often films in tropical, heavily forested locales.

As the name "elephantiasis" implies, the condition causes a person's limb to resemble that of an elephant.

Elephantiasis is actually a complication of a parasitic infection called lymphatic filariasis. More than 120 million people in 73 countries have this infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The worm-like parasites that cause the infection are spread by mosquito bites, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security.

However, most people who become infected with the parasites do not have any symptoms, Adalja told Live Science. And only some develop long-term symptoms, such as elephantiasis, he said. It's unclear why some people go on to develop elephantiasis and others do not, he added.

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This is the place to begin your education about diabetes.

This section of our site provides basic overviews of the major issues surrounding diabetes, with plenty of links to more in-depth information if you need it.

Take our type 2 diabetes risk test for a quick assessment of your risk.

There is no way to predict your chances of getting type 1 diabetes, but you can familiarize yourself with its symptoms.

For some people, due to genetic (inherited) factors or other conditions, the resting metabolic rate (RMR) can be slightly higher or lower than average. Our weight also plays a role in determining how many calories we burn at rest -- the more calories are required to maintain your body in its present state, the greater your body weight. A 100-pound person requires less energy (food) to maintain body weight than a person who weighs 200 pounds.

                                           

Lifestyle and work habits partially determine how many calories we need each day. Someone whose job involves heavy physical labor will naturally burn more calories in a day than someone who sits at a desk most of the day (a sedentary job). For people who do not have jobs that require intense physical activity, exercise or increased physical activity can increase the number of calories burned.

As a rough estimate, an average woman 31-50 years of age who leads a sedentary lifestyle needs about 1,800 calories per day to maintain a normal weight. A man of the same age requires about 2,200 calories. Participating in a moderate level of physical activity (exercising three to five days per week) requires about 200 additional calories per day