Mozart effect.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the Mozart effect.


In double blind tests, children were played various types of music and then tested with various mental challenges. The music included Mozart, Pop Music, Drums and random discordant noises.

Children did best in the tests after random discordant noises and Pop Music, but in all cases the effects were temporary and soon lost.

However in double blind tests it was found that learning to play a musical instrument especially if done over a long period of time, can the increase the IQ and has been shown to make beneficial changes to the brain tests have shown that the effects were maintained.

Yawn

Today's interesting fact has to do with yawning.

Yawning is contagious in humans and other primates.

If any primate sees another yawn, the odds are it will also yawn.

But with humans, the contagiousness of yawning greater.

Not only can we humans yawn when we see other humans, dogs, cats, or primates yawn, we also can start yawning if we read about it, write about it or even just think about yawning.

As no other animals has successfully learnt to read, humans are unique.

Samoa is moving in time

I'm off doing stuff tomorrow, so tomorrows interesting fact is coming today.

The country of Samoa, will be going to bed on the 28th of December and waking on the 30th of December.

They will not be sleeping a whole 24 hours, instead the country is changing time zones, moving itself officially from one side of the international date line to the other.

The idea is to help with trading with other countries, where they feel they are at a disadvantage.

Coffee and Cancer

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the coffee and cancer.

A recent study of 72,921 participants has shown that women who consumed more than three cups of coffee per day had a 20 percent reduction in risk for basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and men who consumed more than three cups per day had a nine percent risk reduction compared with people who consumed less than one cup per month.

It has been suggested that coffee might increase squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) or melanoma  e.g.skin cancers but they did not find any inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk for skin cancers.

So another coffee myth dispelled, it's good for us.

White and Black or Black and White?

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Zebra.

Zebras were traditionally considered to be white animals with black stripes.

This is because some zebras have white underbellies.

However recent research, involving the development of zebra embryos, have shown that their skin colour starts as black, and the white stripes and under belly are added on later in their development.

So Zebras are black with white stripes instead of the other way around.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Xenophyophores.

They are amoung the largest living single cells, reaching 10 cm in diameter.

They can be found in the deepest parts of the oceans and have been found as deep as 10,641 meters (6.6 miles).

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the internal hydrogen combustion engine.

The first hydrogen-fueled interanl combustion engine was designed in 1807 by Francois Isaac de Rivaz a French politician and inventor.

In 1808 he fitted it to a working vehicle, creating the worlds first internal combustion powered automobile.

Genes that make you fat and alcoholic

Today's interesting fact has to do with fat and alcohol.

They have recently discovered that there chemicals that are produced in the hypothalamus that control your desire to eat fatty foods and/or drink alcoholic liquids.

The amount of these chemicals produced have been found to be controlled by specific genes, and they have shown that certain alleles of those genes produce more than others.

I've already discussed about how they found there are additional taste buds that identify different types of fats on your tongue, and that they've shown that we can suffer cravings for specific types of fat and oil in our food.

This suggests that we are less under control of what we desire to eat, than doctors thought.

Coldest place in the known Universe

Today's interesting fact has to do with the coldest place in the known universe.


You might find this hard to believe, but by studying the sky with telescopes, both visual and radio, they've been able to show that the temperature of the universe is pretty constant.


The coldest places we've found yet are not in outer space, not in the depths between the stars or galaxies.


The coldest places we've found so far was generated using our own refrigeration equipment.


Absolute zero corresponds to –273.15 degrees Celsius (or –459.67 degrees Fahrenheit).


Scientists have gotten matter to within 100 picokelvins (pK), or 0.000 000 000 1 of a Kelvin of absolute zero.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the German 30 years war

This war ended in 1648 and was fought by soldiers from all over Europe.

It is estimated that up to 30% of the German population was wiped out during the war, many in atrocities that echo what happened 300 years later.

The end result was the division of Germany into many states, and the basic East / West German divide that has only recently been undone.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with earthquakes.

Earthquakes are caused when tectonic plates slip past, under or over other tectonic plates.

You wouldn’t think that changes in sea level, or changes in the atmosphere could cause earthquakes, but recent studies of the frequency of earthquakes along fault lines and comparing sea levels and atmospheric changes have shown some surprising results.

When El Nino, a weather phenomenon occurs, it moves water from one side of the Pacific Ocean to the other. 

This can cause variations of more than 20 cm in the sea level in some areas.

They found that during the lowest levels, earthquakes can increase from the yearly average of 2 a year, to 8 a year.

Similar studies have suggested that earthquakes are more likely during atmospheric low pressure, than high pressure.

It seems that less pressure on faults allows them to move easier.

Which when you think of it, makes a lot of sense.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with fresh water.

Fresh water accounts for about 2.5% of the water on the earth.

The rest, 97.5% is salt water.

Of the fresh water availble on the earth, less than 1% is available to humans, and is found in lakes, rivers, resevoirs, underground aquifers we can afford to tap.  This fresh water is renewed only by falls of rain and snow.

70% of all the fresh water is tied up in ice caps on Antartica and Greenland.

The other 29% of fresh water is tied up in soil moisture, deep underground aquifers and moisture in the atmosphere as vapour or clouds.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Kick'em Jenny.

Kick'em Jenny is a submarine volcano located north of Grenada and south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Its summit is thought to be about 180 meters below the surface of the sea.

It is thought to be the only live (likely to erupt) submarine volcano in the Eastern Caribbean and is the most frequently active volcano in the region.

It has errupted 12 times since it was discovered in 1939.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with transfats.

Although I’ve done transfats in the past, there is plenty more to be said about them.

Transfats are placed in foods by food manufactures to extend shelf life.  If a cake or loaf of bread will last two weeks on the shelf instead of two days, the shop wins, the manufacturer wins and only the purchaser and consumer loses.

Transfats  are mostly man-made fats, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, that are made by bubbling hydrogen gas through oil in the presence of a nickel catalyst.  This turns the liquid oil into a solid fat.

Transfats have been linked to most of the health issues long thought to be caused by saturated fats: heart disease, cardiac arrests, strokes, plaque in the blood vessels, high blood pressure and numerous other issues.  One way transfat apparently does this by somehow increasing bad and decreasing the good cholesterols as well as getting deposited on the insides of our blood vessels and hardening our arteries.

One way of limiting the transfats in your diet is to know what the ingredients are called in food speak, the way the manufacturers rename transfats to keep you from knowing they are in your food.

If you find hydrogenated vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, vegetable shortening or margarine in the list of ingredients, this is  most likely referring to the transfats within the product.  Some manufacturers have started using just shortening to refer to tranfat.

Some products in the UK can apparently have up to 40% transfat in them.

Me, I’m reading the ingredients from now on a bit more carefully.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Brain.

The brain is the most engergy intensive organ in our body.

It uses 20% of the energy that we get from our food.

Today's interesting fact for the day has to do with the Octopus.

The octopus along with squid are considered to have the most complex brains in the mollusc phyla.

The octopus's brain seems to co-operate with neural ganglia in it's legs, the brain giving the leg ganglia general instructions and the leg ganglia determining how to do what the brain has asked, working more or less independently.

The alimentary canal (digestive tract) passes through the octopus's brain.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Gallons, Quarts, Pints and liquid Ounces.

Most people know that the British Pint (20 British Ounces) is larger than the American Pint (16 American Ounces).

Most people automatically understand therefore, that the British Quart, (2 British Pints) is larger than the American Quart (2 American Pints), and the British Gallon is larger than the American Gallon.

But how many people know that the American liquid Ounce (29.5735296 ml) is larger than the British liquid Ounce (28.4130742)?

To make things slightly more complicated, in the US they also have what is called a US label ounce, which is 30 ml in size.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with our sense of smell.

Our sense of smell affects us much more than you might think, even odours that are below our perception.

This was shown in a recent study of students living in several dorm rooms.

If the researchers released the sent of lemon oil just under the students perception in their kitchens, the students were far more likely to clean the kitchens than if the sent wasn't there.

Been ill for the past week so haven't posted.  Sorry folks, especially Nick.

Still, here we go again.

Today's interesting fact has to do with why we yawn.

There have been many theories as to why we yawn, from threatening possible enemies, to increasing the oxygen we get into our blood, to helping us to wake up.  But lately someone looked at the roof of our mouths with specialist equipment and watched what happens to blood flow, temperature and air flow when we yawn.

The examination of the resultant data suggests that while some of the other suggestions may have some validity, perhaps the biggest reason we yawn is to cool our brains.

The soft palette at the top of our mouths are full of blood vessels that can be used to transfer warmth from the brain into our breath as we breathe out and then colder air coming into our lungs during the yawn then reduces the blood temperature further which then further cools the brain.

And this also explains why we get brain freezes when we accidentally place ice cold foods or drinks on that soft pallet.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Horseshoe Crab.

The Horseshoe crab is considered a living fossil. Fossils that looks almost exactly like the Horseshoe crab show that an animal with the same body and structure first appeared about 450 million years ago and has hardly changed in all that time, which is far longer than most species of plants or animals, including humans can ever hope to exist.

 The Horshoe crabs blood is blue, because it is based around the copper atom instead of an iron atom.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Nectarine.

A lot of people think that nectarines are different species of plant than peaches.

Many people think it is a cross between a peach tree and a plum tree.

But there it is only a single gene difference between the two that changes the fuzzy skin, into a smooth skin. 

Sometimes a peach tree will have a mutation on a branch, and that branch will then have nectarines on it.

You get two today, because I missed yesterday.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Orcas.

Orcas, or Killer Whales, have sometimes been referred to as the wolves of the sea.

I've read many times, that Orcas have never killed and eaten humans.

Some writers have speculated if this has to do with their great intelligence, supposing that the only time they would do this would be if they found a single human, where no other human would notice the attack.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Sharks.

A sharks teeth are constantly replaced throughout life.

Shark teeth are dropped off and fall to the ocean floor.

Fossilised sharks teeth can be found in a large number of ancient sea beds.

Sharks do not have bones but instead the skeleton is made from cartilage.

A shark's jaw has at least one layer of tiny hexagonal plates, crystals of calsium salt, that provides additional strength.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Beaver and it's teeth.

Beavers teeth are strong and grow continuously throughout its life.

Otherwise they would be worn down from all the chewing of wood.

Their incisors are orange, because they have large amounts of iron in their enamel, to make them harder and less likely to wear down.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Dogs and their sense of smell.

A dog's primary method of viewing the world is its sense of smell.

Dogs have 300 million olfactory receptors whereas a human only has 6 million.

A dog’s olfactory cortex uses about 12.5% of a dog’s brain, whereas that of a human is less than one percent.

Dogs can tell if a how long a scent has been on the ground and can easily work out which way a scent trail goes.

In effect scents give dogs a sense of time.

When I was young, I read Tarzan novels.

Tarzan, because he was raised by an unidentified species of great ape (can't be gorillas because they had a language) he was supposed to be able to use and process scents as well as a dog could.

But to do that, he would have had to have a massive restructuring of his brain and nose.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Stock Market.

It has been estimated that over 90% of the trades that are done on the stock market these days are computer controlled.

These computers use algorithms that are specially created for optimum purchase and selling of stock certificates.

The computers used are so fast that microsecond differences in the timing of bids can make or lose millions.

Optical fibres are used to send the signals to and from the markets.

These fibres have traditionally been run along railroad tracks.

But railroad tracks when they go into cities and towns can be forced to wander.

A company recently laid an almost straight optical fibre cable 1300 kilometres from the New York Stock Exchange to the Chicago Stock Exchange, to save microseconds for their customers’ computer trades to allow them to beat their competitors’ bids.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Hair.

Many men lose their hair, either in part or totally.

The reasons for this have been studied for years, and only recently have they worked out what might be the process of hair loss.

They've known for years that hair follicles get smaller and smaller, producing thinner and finer hair until it seems there is none.

Most women and men, who don't lose their hair, have hair follicles that renew themselves mostly in their original form.

What causes these follicles to renew themselves is a small quantity of stem cells located at the root of each hair follicle.

Very recently researchers at Yale have identified that there is a signal that goes from adipose precursor cells in the tissue surrounding the hair follicles to the hair stem cells.

Before hair growth starts, the layer of fat under the skin thickens.

This thickening produces molecules that then stimulate the hair stem cells, to regenerate the hair follicle.

If you feel a part of a scalp that has hair, you will notice that the thickness of the tissue between the outer layer of the skin and above the skull is slightly thicker than that where you don't have hair.

If they can get the fat cells to signal the hair stem cells they may be able to reverse the hair loss.

That is of course, if human hair and skin, works the same as the mice they have been studying.

We chrome domes can only hope.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Cancer.

Cancer has been in the news lately.

It used to be said that one in four would develop cancer in their lifetime.

This has changed to one in three, now that people are living longer.

All men for example, if they live long enough, are thought to develop at least a benign form of cancer of the prostate, and as men are living longer, this skews the statistics.

One recent announcement has given many suffers hope, some researchers have modified the DNA of an Adenovirus so that it targets cancer cells and kills them, but healthy cells are left alone.

It has been suggested that the virus could target any cancer cell.

If this works correctly, then cancer could be a thing of the past.

If this virus mutates to target healthy cells when it is used in patients, it could kill the patients and create a pandemic.

It will be interesting to find out what happens.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Honey War.

The Honey War was a bloodless territorial dispute in the 1830's between Iowa and Missouri.

Before it was settled, a Missouri tax collector had three hollow trees in Iowa containing honey bee hives cut down to collect the honey in lieu of taxes.

A Missouri sheriff was arrested by a Iowa sheriff while attempting to collect taxes.

Militias assembled at both sides of the border of the disputed territory.

And the US Supreme Court ended the affair by confirming the original boundary.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Giant Panda and Bio fuels.

I remember when I was at High School I was watching the TV with my parents; I think it was the news.

The program was asking what good are Pandas and the politician being interviewed stated that if Pandas died out we wouldn't have lost anything.

I've occasionally remembered this interview in the past, especially whenever someone, whether on the TV, Radio or in person, asked the same question.

The WWF has campaigned long and hard to keep Pandas as a species alive and we might be very glad they did.

It is just in science news yesterday and today that they have found a species of bacteria that allows almost total conversion of woody plant material into sugars that can be used to produce bio fuels.

These bacteria have been successfully bred in the lab, don't require high temperatures or pressure and it looks like they may easily adapted to an industrial process.

What most of the articles I've read over the past two days, don't mention where they found the bacteria.

It was in the faecal material of Pandas.

The bacteria live in the guts of Pandas and allow this extremely specialised mammal to live on a diet of mostly woody stems by converting them into sugars.

From these sugars they can create the plastics, oils, and fuels, indeed all the materials we create from fossil fuels.

So, what good is a Panda?

If it turns out to be the salvation of our way of life, including cars, heat and light, perhaps the Panda's existence has no payable price.

It makes me wonder if any of the extinct animals we have lost, could have given us some other priceless gift, if we had left their environments that kept them alive alone.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the oldest living animal found so far.

It is a Quahog clam, scientific name Artica islandica.

Clams are like trees, in that they lay down a new layer of shell every year, just like trees do.

Trees will sometimes lay down two rings a year, but they have never found this discrepancy with clams so far.

This latest specimen is between 405 and 410 years old.

The oldest mammal is thought to be a either a Blue whale or a Bow whale.

As we get older, the lenses of our eyes get thicker; a layer of cells gets laid down every year.

By counting these layers, you can determine the age of the animal.

Bow and Blue whales grow to enormous sizes, and it takes time for an animal to get so big.

Counting these lens layers they have gotten an estimated age of 178 years for one Bow whale, which means that when we were still hunting these animals in wooden boats, at least one of them was an adult.

This could be one reason it is so difficult to get near Bow whales.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Cholera.

There are from 3 to 5 million cases of Cholera a year.

Cholera is a completely preventable disease; the method for preventing outbreaks was discovered in the Victorian age.

Cholera can be prevented by investment in sanitation and clean water, by the use of soap and water before handling food and finally by the boiling of drinking water.

The introduction of tea and coffee to the British Empire actually helped prevent Cholera outbreaks because those who brew it always brought the water to boiling before use.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the planet Saturn.

Saturn is the least dense planet found to date in our solar system.

Its density means that if there were a pool of water big enough to put it in, it would float.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with The War of Jenkins' Ear.

Robert Jenkins was a captain of a British merchant ship.

He exhibited his severed ear in Parliament in 1731.

It had been cut off during the boarding of his vessel by the Spanish coast guard.

This, along with a number of similar incidents started a war against the Spanish Empire.

The war eventually became part of the War of the Austrian Succession.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Tetrahymena thermophila.

This is a ciliated portozoan which has two types of cell nuclei, a somatic macronucleus and a smaller germline micronucleus that are always found in the cell.

The germline nucleus come in seven different varients which they have labled as sexes.

They can reproduce in 21 different combinations, but not with themselves.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the book On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

The word Evolution does not appear in the book.

The word Evolve appears once.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with what type of food our ancestors ate.

From studying bones and teeth, and the various isotopes found within them, they have found they can accurately determine the diet of the creature they are studying as well as where the animal grew up and if it moved from one area to another.

From their studies we know that before 10,000 BC, the average human ate average of probably 65% plant to 35% animal derived foods.

After 10,000 BC depending on where they were in the world, this changed to as high as 90% plant to 10% animal derived foods.

Before 10,000 BC humans got their animal protein from various sources.

In order of decreasing importance to the diet or if you prefer the amount they ate, we have insects or their grubs, small lizards, mammals and birds, fish, shellfish, and the occasional large animal.

It is also interesting to note that before 10,000 BC, the average human was taller, stronger and healthier than after 10,000 BC when they became weaker, shorter and had more infections.

There are multiple reasons for the decrease in health the ancients but one they have positively identified is the switch to a more vegetarian diet.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with raw food and diet.

A couple weeks ago, I heard a science podcast where a Palaeobiologist who is also an Archeologist was being interviewd about our ancestors and the food they ate.

He pointed out that our digestive system has been fine tuned to eating cooked foods.

During the interview this he pointed out that given the sources of foods our ancestors had access to, if one of us would slowly starve on a raw vegetable diet as we could not eat enough to provide the nutrients our bodies need.

This suggests that we have eaten cooked foods long enought for our digestive system to rely on it.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Spiders and the thread they make.

Spider thread has five times the tensile strength of steel and is stronger then even the best currently available synthetic fibres.

It has been shown that if you have enough silk it is better than Kevlar in bullet proof vests and weights considerably less.

The genes that produce spider thread have been added goats in the section that produces milk, and they have produced some spider silk by extracting it from the milk these goats produce.

They have also added different genes to various bacteria and are hoping to produce the chemicals that get mixed to produce the silk in larger quantities.

Once they have the chemicals needed in large enough quantities all that will be needed is something that reproduces the spider’s spinneret.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with bacteria and antibiotic resistance.

This is a subject I could write on all day, so I will be doing several posts over the next few weeks on the subject.

When antibiotics were first introduced, many people who would have died from what we now consider minor infections instead lived and they were considered a modern miracle.

However many bacteria are developing antibiotic resistances.

Sometimes this occurs from mutations within their genome.

Just as often, it seems the bacteria are getting the genes from other bacteria.

It seems that bacteria have sex.

And not just with bacteria from their own species, but also from other bacterial species.

This is why so many diseases are more serious.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with green potatoes.

This past weekend, I was asked if it was safe to eat green potatoes.

The simple answer is that it isn’t.

I was then asked why… no one should ever ask me why if they don’t want the answer.

When potatoes are exposed to light, they turn green.

This is caused by chlorophyll becoming active in the tuber under the skin.

But it is not the chlorophyll that causes the problem, but the glycoalkaloids that are produced along with the chlorophyll.

These are mostly the chemicals solanine and chaconine, but there are others.

High concentrations of these compounds can cause headaches, diarrhoea, cramps, coma and death.

So don’t eat green potatoes.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Blue Whales.

Blue Whales are as far as we know the largest animals to ever have ever existed.

The Blue Whale is a filter feeder using baleen, a hair-like substance that grows from the roof of the mouth, to filter out small fish, krill and plankton from water they engulf, but do not swallow.

All whales that have baleen have a special joint at their chin that allows each side of the jaw to rotate.

This allows them to engulf vast amounts of water.

The Blue Whale has a mouth cavity that can engulf a volume of water equivalent to its own body mass.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with vampire bats and how they find their prey.

Vampire bats do not swoop down on their prey.

Instead they land, shuffle along the ground to the animals they will feed on, then they carefully slice through an artery or vein, and carefully lap up a few teaspoons of blood, before shuffling off to where they take off and go back to their roost.

Vampire bats are very proficient in finding the parts of the body where the blood vessels are close to the skin.

Scientists have recently discovered they use the same heat identifying nerve cells we have in our lips and tongues to find these spots.

But where our nerve cells are set to identify heat that would burn us, the vampire bats heat nerve cells in their lips are have been set the temperature of the blood.

So the vampire bat's lips are heat seekers.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with colonic irrigation.

A recent study at St George University in the UK has taken followed the health records of a large number of individuals who have had colonic irrigation over a number of years.

The outcome of the study suggests that there are no health benefits to colonic irrigation, instead it can actually be bad for you as it may remove beneficial bacteria and there are side effects that can vary from nausea, vomiting, intestinal injury and death.

Doctors sometimes give patients with impacted faeces an enema, but these tend to use no more than a half a litre of an isotonic fluid or distilled water.

A colonic irrigation on the other hand can have as much as 65 litres of water introduced into the large intestine.

It has been known for a number of years that the introduction of water used in a colonic irrigation can cause blood isotonic issues, where the process of osmosis means at essential salts are drawn from the blood into the intestine, which is why doctors often use isotonic fluids.

But until now, no one has ever done a study to see what the benefits of colonic irrigation actually are, and now we know there are none.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with humans and the time we spend indoors.

From a number of studies done recently, the average individual in the developed world spends only 90% of their time out of doors.

I found this hard to believe at first, but after thinking more about it, I spend a little over 2 hours walking to and from work during the week, and on weekends, I may go out several times, but much of my time is spent inside shops instead of outside.

If you include the time people spend inside cars, which most people do more than they think, this average becomes obviously true.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with muscles and chimpanzees.

The average chimp's muscles are twice as strong as a human's muscles.

The reduction in strength is thought to have allowed us humans to increase our dexterity, and therefore produce the flints, wood work and eventually societies we now have in the modern world.

So the loss of strength is not necessarily a bad thing, if you want to write or use a keyboard as a ten finger typist.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with King Abdullah of Jordan.

He was once an extra in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Meat.

In 1932, Winston Churchill predicted we would soon be growing specific cuts of meat, instead of slaughtering animals to get them.

It may have taken a bit longer than he thought it would have, but they have now grown meat in labs from stem cells and have served and eaten the cuts.

While the consistancy of the cuts of meat does not yet match the naturally grown cuts, they fully expect to match it in the near future.

We can eventually look forward to pain free meat products.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Xanthan gum and low fat foods.

Xanthan gum is a polysaccharid that is used to lower the fat contents in foods.

The biggest problem with low fat foods is that removing the fat changes the consistancy of the food we eat.

Fortunately someone noticed that a bacteria that grows on cabbages, and makes those black spots we often find on cabbages that are in our fridges, produces a polysaccharid that can be used to produce much the same consistancy.

Xanthomonas campestris is grown in sterile vats, broken down, and then used to lower the fat content in food,

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Oatmeal and Eczema.

I was discussing yesterdays interesting fact with Nick and for some reason the conversation moved to skin complaints and natural remedies that help them.

If you take oatmeal, place it in a small muslin pouch, and run hot water through it into your bath, bathing in the water can help with eczema.

I learned this from David Bellamy when he was on a TV program, and he mentioned that his daughter had eczema and this herbal remedy helped his daughter.

Someone in my family had problems with eczema and we tried the remedy and it also helped her, and it has also helped everyone I've ever mentioned it to who told me they had tried it.

I understand it doesn't always work, but so far I've never known anyone who it hasn't help relieve at least some if not all of the symptoms.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the liquorice.

Liquorice is enjoyed by many people, but there are some who should not eat it, especially not in large amounts.

Liquorice increases your blood pressure, and if you have high blood pressure and are on medication for it, you should not eat the sweet.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the musically inclined and the age 27.

Since 1908, at least 45 musicians and singers who are considered to being important to the development of music have died on reaching 27 years of age.

A short list that I've looked up is as follows:

Name	What they did.
Brian Jones	Rolling Stones founder and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist.
Jimi Hendrix	Pioneering electric guitarist, singer and songwriter for The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsys.
Janis Joplin	Lead vocalist and songwriter for Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Kozmic Blues Band and Full Tilt Boogie Band.
Jim Morrison	Lead singer, songwriter and video director for The Doors.
Kurt Cobain	Founding member, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for Nirvana.
Louis Chauvin	Ragtime musician.
Robert Johnson	Bluesman. Recorded very famous and influential set of 29 songs that influenced many famous musicians after him.
Nat Jaffe	Blues musician.
Jesse Belvin	R&B singer and songwriter.
Rudy Lewis	Vocalist of The Drifters.
Malcolm Hale	Original member of Spanky and Our Gang.
Dickie Pride	British rock and roll singer.
Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson	Leader, singer and primary composer of Canned Heat.
Arlester "Dyke" Christian	Frontman and vocalist of Dyke & the Blazers.
Linda Jones	R&B singer.
Les Harvey	Guitarist for Stone the Crows.
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan	Founding member, keyboardist and singer of the Grateful Dead.
Roger Lee Durham	Singer and percussionist of Bloodstone.
Wallace Yohn	Organ player of Chase.
Dave Alexander	Bassist for the Stooges.
Pete Ham	Keyboardist and guitarist, leader of Badfinger.
Gary Thain	Former bassist of Uriah Heep and The Keef Hartley Band.
Cecilia	Spanish singer
Helmut Köllen	Bassist with 1970s German prog rock band Triumvirat.
Chris Bell	Singer-songwriter and guitarist of power pop band Big Star and solo.
Jacob Miller	Jamaican reggae artist and lead singer for Inner Circle.
D. Boon	Guitarist, lead singer of punk band the Minutemen.
Alexander Bashlachev	Russian poet, rock musician and songwriter.
Jean-Michel Basquiat	Painter and graffiti artist; formed the band Gray.
Pete de Freitas	Drummer for Echo & the Bunnymen.
Mia Zapata	Lead singer of the Gits.
Kristen Pfaff	Bass guitarist for Hole and Janitor Joe.
Richey James Edwards	Lyricist and guitarist for Manic Street Preachers.
Stretch	Rapper
Fat Pat	Rapper and member of Screwed Up Click.
Freaky Tah	Rapper and member of the hip hop group Lost Boyz.
Sean Patrick McCabe	Lead singer of Ink & Dagger.
Rodrigo Bueno	Argentinian Cuarteto singer.
Maria Serrano Serrano	Background singer for Passion Fruit.
Jeremy Michael Ward	The Mars Volta and De Facto sound manipulator.
Bryan Ottoson	Guitarist for American Head Charge.
Valentín Elizalde	Mexican banda singer.
Orish Grinstead	Founding member of '90s R&B group 702.
Lily Tembo	Zambian musician.
Amy Winehouse	British singer/songwriter.

Lots of other individuals many have considered as influential in their fields of expertise have also died at 27. These include sport stars, scientists, politicians and many more.

27 seems to be a special age and I have heard some suggesting there must be a conspiracy, but I think it is just that some people die at 27.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with toothpaste and wasting money.

Does anyone ever read the instructions on the toothpaste boxes or containers?

Being a bit of a nerd, I have.

The instructions are contradictory to the adverts that show us how to use the stuff.

Adverts show the users placing a long line of paste from one end of the bristles of toothbrush to the other and usually extending over the ends.

However if you read the instructions they tell you to place a pea sized amount on the brush.

Peas are not that large which means if you are using the adverts to determine how much to place on your toothbrush, you are putting three to four (or more) times more paste than you actually need.

The reason for the adverts suggesting you put so much more on is of course to increase sales, if you use four times as much toothpaste as you need, you will be purchasing toothpaste four times as often as you need.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the platypus, often referred to as the duckbilled platypus.

This is one of the five species of Monotremes that are still with us.

A Monotreme is an egg laying mammal that nurses its young.

Unlike placental or marsupial mammals which have two sex chromosomes, one pair; the platypus has ten sex chromosomes, five pairs.

There is no agreed plural of the word platypus.

Platypuses is sometimes used as is platypi but the first is by English rules and the second is pseudo-Latin.

The name platypus is derived from Greek, so the correct plural is really platypodes.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with moths.

Moths are closely related to butterflies and are in the same order, Lepidoptera.

There are thought to be between 150,000 and 250,000 species of moths in the world, perhaps 10 times as many butterfly species.

Most are nocturnal but some work at twilight or during the day.

Some moths can be easily identified when in caterpillar form and others are easily identified as adults, but many are so similar that the only way to properly identify them is to scan their genetics, which is time consuming, and as most species moths have not had their genes analysed yet, pointless; or to dissect their genitals, which involves killing the moth.

Most moth species have genitals that are completely different, with male and female parts fitting together in one specific way, thus preventing breeding with incompatible species.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with wasps.

Many people get upset by wasps, some positively freak out.

But until the wasp larvae grow up, wasps provide a valuable service, especially in our vegetable gardens and farms, as they are predators who hunt those insects that damage our crops.

Until the wasp larvae have matured, the adult hunters go out and find many of the caterpillars and adult insects for the wasp grubs.

Adult wasps do not become attracted to our picnics until later in the summer.

This is because the wasp larvae act as secondary stomachs for the adult hunter wasps that do not have the metabolic ability to digest proteins.

Adults feed the larvae protein rich insects and carrion and the larvae then regurgitate pre-digested meals for the adult wasps.

It is only after the last generation of wasps in the nest which includes all the drones and queen larvae have gone to pupation in the last days of the nest, the hunter wasps then turn to finding more sugary foods to feed themselves.

At this point go after fallen fruit, our sugary drinks and our picnic baskets and therefore become pests to us.

Between Nick and I having time off last week, I wasn't able to give him his facts of the day in a timely manner.

I have been off setting this omission by adding some additional facts, here is another for today.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with passwords.

Recently, with the hacking of Sony user database as well as various banks, there has been a lot of attention to people's passwords.

Various hacking groups have posted the information on websites for other hackers, and security analysts have downloaded the information in an attempt to make our passwords more secure.

The results of this scrutiny have caused some companies to change the types of passwords they allow us to use, requiring the addition of numbers and non-alphanumeric characters in our passwords.

A recent study by one of these analysts has shown that 14 percent of the passwords used are given names.

Of these names, the top three used are,

maggie
michael
jennifer

The same study showed that 25 percent of passwords come from the dictionary.

The top three used of these are:

password
monkey
dragon

In addition, many use the same passwords for every site they access.

Is it any wonder that so many find their accounts hacked?

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Thumbs.

Specifically with how many distal digits animals have.

There are two types of animals that normally have 6 digits on the ends of their forearms.

The Giant Panda is one and moles are the other.

Both have a 'second thumb'.

In the case of the Giant Panda, the first thumb is like a finger and the thumb is a growth developed from one of the wrist bones.

In the case of moles, the second thumb has also developed from of the wrist bones.

This second digit is not the same as the polydactyl condition that sometimes occurs in cats, as only some cats have multiple digits, whereas all Giant Pandas and Moles have these second thumbs.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Tuberculosis (TB).

Many people know something about TB, usually that it was common and lethal in the past, and 100 years ago, everyone knew someone who had it.

Now, it seems to be confined to third world countries, and most people don't know anyone with it.

Back in 2005, in the UK they stopped inoculating people against the disease, because people were not catching TB in numbers that made it sensible to continue the vaccines.

But in London, in just 6 years, the number of the indigenous population catching the disease has increased to a point where they are considering re-introducing the vaccine.

Those being infected are catching it from people from overseas who are either visiting, as tourists or migrant workers, or from immigrants from countries where the disease is still prevalent.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Bone China,

Many people like the porcelain that is bone china.

The fact that is is so white and translucent coupled with the high mechanical strength and chip resistance makes it very popular.

The strength means that it can be made much thinner than other china.

But what a lot of people don't know is that the name describes what it is made from, with more than 30% made from phosphate and calcium phosphate from animal bones.

The traditional method of making it requires 50% bone ash in the preparation and to keep the iron content down, most is derived from cattle bones.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with transfats.

The medical profession have all agreed throughout the world that transfats are bad for us.

The US FDA recommends a limit of 2 grams of transfat a day.

The EU is considering what limit to suggest.

Denmark recently banned transfats in foods in that country, but the EU stated that the ban was illegal and they had to rescind it.

Transfats have often been called empty calories, except that your body does use them, although not in the way you might wish it to.

Transfats increase the bad cholesterol in your blood, and has been linked to the plaque that forms in arteries.

In the US, if a product has more a half a gram of transfat per serving, they have to put the information on the packet.

So many companies have reduced their suggested serving sizes, so that each serving size only has 0.49 grams of transfat in it, and therefore they do not need to declare it is in the product.

It also means they can put 0% transfat on their packet, even though the product has transfats in them.

Because the serving size is reduced, and people tend to still eat what they think is the correct serving, many end up going over the recommended limit very quickly.

In the EU, transfat amounts are not yet required on the packet, and companies include it within the saturated fat figure.

Granola bars, breakfast cereals, cakes and breads often contain transfat.

Until the EU requires transfat amounts on packages and the US requires exact amounts of it in food products, no one will really know how much they are eating.

Did I mention that transfats are bad for us?

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the practice of sex selective abortions.

In China and India, they have been selecting to have male children instead of female children for a number of years.

This can be done with an easy screening of the foetus by extracting cells floating in the water of the womb, an amniocentesis, and verifying the sex of the child by looking at the sex chromosomes.

This is because within even a small amount of amniotic fluid there will be foetal tissue.

This originally was used to test for chromosomal abnormalities and foetal infections, but has been turned to making sure you have the sex of the child that some desire.

In China, the sex of your child is considered important, as male children look after their parents as they age, and female children when they marry move to their husband home, where they look after the parents.

Because of the one child policy, where urban couples are allowed to only have one child, many of these urban couples are selecting to only have male children.

There are exceptions to the policy, which are rural couples, ethnic minorities and parents without any siblings.

Unfortunately this sexual selection in China now means that under the age of 20, there are 32 million more boys than girls in the Chinese population.

Where these young men are going to find wives is anyone’s guess.

This subject has been covered in a number of future fictions, where many of the books have suggested other countries would be invaded to provide these women.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Asthma.

I have asthma, and the past few days it has been very difficult to breathe.

The number of people who have asthma seems to be increasing exponentially in the western world.

There are many possible theories for why this has happened.

One theory is that we have become too clean, have gotten rid of too many parasites such as worms, bacteria, and viruses that are normally found in our systems, and our immune systems are attacking the only thing they have left, our own bodies.

This theory has gotten a boost recently with the discovery that infections of helicobacter pylori seem relieve some symptoms of asthma, as if the immune system is attacking the bacteria instead of the lungs.

Because of the potential bad affects of h. pylori on the body, which include ulcers, acid reflux, and various cancers, doctors have been treating many to get rid of the infection, even if the infections have been benign.

They are now rethinking the treatments of benign infections.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Krill.

Krill are small shrimp like invertebrates that are found in all the oceans of the world and they feed many large animals, such as whales and basking sharks as well as many smaller species.

It is estimated that if you took all the Antarctic krill and placed them on one side of a balancing scale and put all the humans on the planet on the other side of the scale, the Krill would weigh more.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with dogs.

I wrote earlier about the new evidence that humans and dogs have co-existed for more than 32,000 years.

An article I read a little while ago asked why humans would have domesticated dogs, because as carnivores they would compete with humans, and that that competition would contraindicate the relationship.

However, another article suggested that as dogs are eaten over a large part of the world, and that dogs have been shown to been eaten everywhere in the world at one time or another, domesticating dogs would have made sense, especially if larger litters were selected for as well as breeding more than once a year.

A bitch that is nursing doesn't eat much more than they do when they are not, they tend to move about less and use less energy than they would normally.

As the owners of the litter would only want to keep one or two from a litter at most, and that they would be concentrating on selecting those in the litter that got on with humans best, the rest of the litter would be available for the common pot.

This would explain why dogs breed more than once in a year, unlike wolves, as well as the larger than normal wolf litter sizes most dogs have.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Tallow.

Tallow usually a rendered form of beef and mutton fat, although commercial tallows can also contain other animals fats such as lard from pigs, fat from deer or plant fats.

Tallow is used in making soaps, detergents, fabric softeners, cosmetics, medical preparations and a myriad of other products.

Many people such as Vegans or Vegetarians, find it important to know if animal extracts have been used in making the products they use, and others such as Muslims or Jews find it important to know if a product may contain pig lard in order to comply with their religious dietary laws.

One way to tell if a product contains tallow is if the name of the ingredient contains the letters tallo in it.

While in no way complete following list contains examples of known tallow derived ingredients:

Dihydrogenated Tallow Benzylmoniumchloride, Dihydrogenated Tallow Methylamine, Dihydrogenated Tallow Phthalate, Dihydroxyethyl Tallow Amine Oxide, Dimethyl Hydrogenated Tallowamine, Dimethyl Tallowamine, Disodium Hydrogenated TallowGlutamate, Disodium Tallamido Mea-Sulfosuccinate, Disodium Tallowaminodipropionate, Ditallowdimonium Chloride, Hydrogenated Animal Glyceride, Hydrogenated Ditallow Amine, Hydrogenated Tallow Acid, Hydrogenated Tallow Betaine, Hydrogenated Tallow Glyceride, Isopropyl Tallowatelsopropyl Lanolate, PEG-13 Hydrogenated Tallow Amide, PEG-15 Tallow Polyamine, PEG-20 Tallowate, PEG-28 Glyceryl Tallowate, PEG-3 Tallow Aminopropylamine, PEG-10 Tallow Aminopropylamine, PEG-15 Tallow Aminopropylamine, Potassium Tallowate, Sodium Hydrogenated Tallow Glutamate, Sodium TAllow Sulfate, Sodium Tallowate, Sodium Tallowate, Tallow, Tallow Acid, Tallow Amide, Tallow Amidopropylamine Oxide. Tallow Amine, Tallow Amine Oxide, Tallow Glycerides, Tallow Hydroxyethal Imidazoline, Tallow Imidazoline, Tallow Trimonium Chloride, Talloweth-6, Tallowmide DEA and MEA, Tallowmidopropyl Hydroxysultaine, Tallowminopropylamine, or Tallowmphoacete.

The following ingredients that can be found in various product may have been extracted from Tallow: Palmitic acid, Stearic acid, Myristic acid, Oleic acid, Palmitoleic acid, Linoleic acid and Linolenic acid.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Camels and birth control.

I was eating a couple stoned dried dates, when I found a date seed and this reminded me of the following interesting fact.

I have read from several souces over the years that for thousands of years those who raised camels used to use the stones from dates as an IUD to prevent unwanted pregnancies in their female camels.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Polar Bears.

Many people think polar bears are white, but they are not.

The polar bear's skin is black, from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail.

While the fur looks white, it is actually transparent when viewed in a microscope, we see it as white due to limited diffraction and reflection of light.

If you look carefully at a hair, you will notice that it not just clear but it is also hollow.

The hollow core serves several purposes.

First it provides buoyancy when swimming.

Second the air in the hollow provides additional insulation.

Third like the most modern optical fibre which are now hollow, this core helps channel light down to the skin of the bear, where the black skin absorbs any residual heat.

This fur, combined with the layer of fat beneath the skin, allows polar bears to function in temperatures less than 70 degrees Centigrade.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with English Blackbirds, Song Thrushes and Anvils.

A lot of people know that Song Thrushes will pick a large rock and use it as an anvil to break up snail shells and eat the extracted snail.

I was walking home last night and saw an English Blackbird do the same, using a brick drive way as the anvil.

Aparently Blackbirds in some parts of England have learnt the trick and in other areas, the birds will steal extracted snails from Song Thrushes and in other areas Blackbirds don't seem to eat snails.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with carbon dioxide.

About 55 million years ago, the temperature of the earth rose six degrees over a period of about 20,000 years.

It seems that the increase took place because of an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

They have identified what produced the increase, and they estimate the temperature change was caused by an increase of 2 gigatons of CO2 a year over the normal release amounts during that period.

Compare that with modern days, when we are releasing 25 gigatons of CO2 a year.

This release 55 million years ago was important to us.

There was a minor extinction event, some say very minor, which killed off many larger mammal species.

But it did allow the evolution of monkeys, apes and hominids, which lead eventually to us.

It makes me wonder what our additions to our atmosphere will allow to evolve in the future.

Today's interesting fact has to do with iPhones.

I don't actually have one, can't afford it at the momment, although I'd love to have one.

I only learnt this intersting fact yesterday.

Research done by a app developer, found that about 10 different pastcodes, would unlock one in seven iPhones.

There are 10,000 possible combinations I read, yet from this a tenth of a percent of the combinations, will unlock a large portion of them.

Out of 204,508 phones checked, the top three codes used were 1234, 0000 and 2580 with over 10 percent of the observed population using just these three codes.

Makes me wonder, and I'm going to make sure I don't use them if I ever get one.

The blog I read this information from is at:

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/2668-passcodes.html

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Monet.

Monet was a French painter and is considered by many to be one of the founders of the French impressionist movement.

He is famous for changing his style of painting, as in his red period and his blue period.

What a lot of people don't know is that when his red period started, he had developed cataracts, which shifted his vision into red.

When he started his blue period, he had just had the cataracts removed, along with most of the lenses in his eyes.

This allowed ultraviolet light to pass through into his eye, and it seems it made many things seem much bluer.

He even went back to previous paintings and repainted portions to make them bluer.

This trait of bluer vision has been confirmed with others who have had their lenses removed.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Ultraviolet light.

This came about because of a question from my work colleague Saghir.

Ultraviolet light often abbreviated as UV, has shorter wavelengths than visible light.

UV is invisible to the eye, being filtered out by the lens.

It causes sunburn, cataracts in the lens, and has been shown to cause skin cancer by causing damage to the DNA of skin cells.

Much of UV light is blocked by the ozone layer.

Where this layer is depleted, increased skin cancers and cataracts have been noted in both people and animals.

They've been using UV light to deactivate micro-organisms in wine that would normally spoil the product.

The UV light doesn't necessarily kill the microbes but instead damages them in a way that they cannot reproduce and they stop growing.

Recently, this process has been used as an alternative to pasteurisation for milk.

The pasteurisation process currently used doesn't kill all the microbes that can be found in milk, and can cause chemical changes in milk, which some object to.

UV light does stop the microbes in milk that pasteurisation doesn't get rid of, and doesn't cause the chemical changes in the milk.

The use is being piloted and if all goes well it may replace pasteurisation.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with magnetic fields and the eye.

Many animals can sense magnetic fields.

There are many different methods that have been developed by nature to allow animals to do this.

One system is a chemical that is found in the eyes of many animals, as diverse as mammals, birds, and insects.

It has been noticed that high power electric transmission lines seems to affect animals with this system.

Recently this chemical has been found to exist in human eyes, although no one has yet determined if humans can detect magnetic fields.

But I had a thought, when I had learnt this.

A small number of people I know seem to be affected by high power electric lines.

They complain of headaches, spots in their vision, and poor eye sight after going under one of these lines or electrical pylons.

Add this to the aura that some individuals claim to be able to see.

Someone I know, lets call them S, regularly visits one of these individuals who claims to see auras.

In a recent visit this individual noted that S's aura was out of its normal shape.

It just so happened that S had just gone under one of those lines.

Could it be that some people can see magnetic lines and see them as auras, because of this chemical?

Watch this space, and if I read anything more on this subject, I will post it here.

I was away from things for the past few days, so here is Wednesday’s interesting fact.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with high voltage electric transmission and sun eruptions.

Our civilisation relies on electricity.

It provides our light, heats our homes, cools our food, is starting to move our cars, it is the power for our industries.

Without electricity, it is doubted by some that our civilisation would survive.

The system of high voltage electric transmissions, that take our electricity from the power stations that generate it to where we use it, is under threat.

As shown in the 1859 solar eruption, when telegraph lines burnt out and operators where shocked, and again in 1989 when Hydro-Quebec Canadian power grid went down for more than nine hours, our current system is not proof against solar eruptions.

If a large eruption went off, we could lose everything we now rely on.

I was away from things for the past few days, so here is Tuesday's interesting fact.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with steam trains.

Apparently, since the creation of the railroads in the UK, there has not been a single year, where there has not been a steam traction engine on the UK main lines.

They may have replaced them for the most part in the UK with electric and diesel, but there still are steam trains in use in the UK.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the urine.

Many people will tell you that urine is sterile and that nothing lives in it.

Some survivalists have suggested that if you get wounded away from possible medical treatment you should urinate on the wound to clean it.

As odd as this seems to most, this practice has allegedly assisted in the healing process.

But urine isn't quite a sterile as most people think.

Hidden within the golden fluid, are scattered stem cells, released by the body and excreted with the rest of the liquid.

These cells have been shown to be very important for some, in a different way than might have been expected.

Medical Scientists have taken these cells and seeded a collagen framework, to create ureters, urethras, bladders and even complete kidneys.

These new ureters, urethras and bladders, created by the patient's own stem cells, collected from their urine, have been successfully used to replace defective organs.

Whole kidneys have been successfully implanted into test animals and we are likely to hear about whole kidneys in the near future.

This would be a boon to anyone with diseased kidneys, where the patient does not have a genetic disease that would suggest not using the patients stem cells, then kidney transplants may become easier, and done with the patients own cells.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Pharaoh ant.

Pharaoh ants are small tropical ants that are yellow or light brown in colour and almost transparent.

No one is exactly sure where they originally came from, although the West Indies and Indonesia have been suggested.

We may never know their exact origin, but they have been introduced just about everywhere in the world that humans live.

Each colony can have up to 200 queens, with between 1000 and 2500 workers in them.

Each nest is very small and a number of them together can suggest that massive colonies exist.

Colonies reproduce by budding, where a small number of ants containing a cross section of types, will leave together to a new home.

A single colony can populate a large building through budding in less than six months.

Pharaoh ants do not have a nest mate smell, so unlike many other ants, individuals that end up in the wrong colony are treated the same as original inhabitants.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with light from the sun and why certain disaster movies make no sense.

We live on the earth courtesy of the light and heat we receive from the sun.

There have been several disaster movies about the sun shutting down, and that life giving light stopping.

The light that comes from the sun is generated by several means.

One source is the ionised atoms in the outer shell of the Sun.

Interactions between these ions generate photons, which escape the sun providing light.

Another source is the atomic furnace deep within the sun. Hydrogen atoms fuse and the result generates heat and light.

The heat creates the gigantic convection currents that roll through the sun, spreading the heat and creating the ionised atoms that generates some of our light.

The photons generated from fusion travels in a random direction. We are told that in general it will travel at the speed of light on average about 2 cm before it gets absorbed by another atom.

The atom that absorbs the photon will then release a photon, in a random direction only to be absorbed by another atom.

It is estimated that it will take about a million years before the average photon created by fusion leaves the surface of the sun.

In the disaster movies, fusion stops, the sun stops shining, and intrepid astronauts go to the sun, and using our nuclear weapons, restart the sun.

But if the sun stopped fusion, it would take a million years before it started to dim so I doubt we would notice the process had stopped.

And if we restarted the sun's fusion, it could take a million years before it started to shine at the same levels as it does now.

So those movies are not based on facts, and we can stop worrying about the sun going out.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Birds and how they breathe.

Birds have a more efficient breathing system than mammals do.

Birds have up to nine air sacs in their bodies, which help reduce their overall weight but also both store air and act like bellows allowing fresh air to constantly flow through the lungs during each cycle of inhale and exhale.

Mammals use a bidirectional airflow in their lungs which moves the air in and out. This means that air that has been depleted with oxygen is mixed with fresh air with every breath.

Birds because of the way their lungs and air sacs are designed breathe with a unidirectional airflow, so that the air makes a circuit in the lungs. This means that air is never mixed, and is always fresh.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Owls.

Large birds of prey, owls have large eyes that take in whatever light is available.

Most owls hunt at night, in the dark.

Many people think owls use their superior night sight to hunt, but most owls actually use their hearing to hunt and use their eyes to keep from flying into objects.

To aid the Owl in hearing one of the ears is placed higher on the head than the other.

This allows better hearing helping the owl to better pinpoint it's prey.

The circle of feathers found around the eyes are designed to help direct the sound to the ears.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Medicine and Zoonoses.

We often think of the possibility of humans catching diseases from animals, pets, domesticated or wild.

Go anywhere these days and you will hear Mothers telling their children to not touch an animal because they could catch something.

A disease that transfers to humans from animals is a zoonose.

Flu, Rabies, SARS, Salmonella, toxoplasmosis and HIV are a few of the diseases that have regularly made the transition from animal to human.

Bovine tuberculosis is another disease that can sometimes infect people through their milk.

Herds that have been identified as having TB have been culled to prevent this from occurring.

It is often thought that TB crossed from Cattle to Humans when they were fist domesticated.

However, gene sequencing has shown that the TB that infects cattle originally came from the humans; their TB is a descendant of ours.

Researchers thought that that armadillos would be good subjects to test leprosy treatments on, because of their low body temperature.

When researchers realised that wild armadillos carried leprosy, it was suggested that it had always existed in the new world, and had not been imported from the old world by European settlers as originally thought.

Alerts recently went out asking people to not touch or interact with the animals.

But gene sequencing has shown that the leprosy infecting wild armadillos actually had crossed over very recently from humans and has not had the chance to mutate into a new separate species of bacteria, so it looks like the European settlers did bring it with them.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Bread.

About 80% of the bread sold these days is produced using a system called the Chorleywood Process.

It is characterised by having a long shelf life, is almost always plastic wrapped, and is usually but not always defined as a sandwich loaf.

The process was developed in Chorleywood Flour Milling and Bakery Research Association laboratories in 1961 and it has revolutionised the way bread is produced throughout the world.

The bread on the inside is up to 40% softer, comes out fluffier so you get larger loafs with less material and importantly allows the baker to use lower protein wheat, with the side benefit is that the shelf life of the bread is usually more than doubled. The process also saves money by reducing the amount of time required from start to finish by more than half.

The traditional method of baking bread uses yeast and there are several methods. One is to mix the all ingredients at once, create the dough, allow it to rise, punch it down, place in baking tray, it to prove (rise again) and finally bake. Another method requires mixing the ingredients and allowing 24 to 72 hours or more of fermentation before baking.

The new process works by adding hard fats, extra yeast and a number of different chemicals and mixing at high speed until the dough is ready to bake in a fraction of the time the traditional methods take. The extra chemicals added include (but are not limited to) ascorbic acid, hydrochloride, sodium metabisulfate, ammonium chloride, various phosphates, amylase, and protease.

The whole process has started to come under question. The hard fats used for some time were usually transfats and many places (such as New York City) have started to ban the use of transfats in foods. The yeast doesn't have as much time to work on the bread and it is suggested that the chemistry of the bread may be affected. This change in chemistry is thought by some to be causing the issues of gluten intolerance. This is because traditionally made breads do not cause the specific symptoms people seem get when eating bread produced by the newer system. Three-quarters of people who believe they have an allergy or intolerance to bread show no signs in blind allergy testing.

There have been marked changes in our gut flora since the introduction of this new bread making system. These changes have been liked to allergies, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease and Clostridium Difficile infections, as well as possibly many diseases originally thought to only be genetic, bacterial or viral in nature, such as Diabetes and Parkinson disease.

Studies using test animals have suggested there is a possible link. Recent human studies starting using with men and women who have never eaten bread produced by the Chorleywood system have shown significant changes to their gut flora once they start eating the bread. While the jury is still out, initial indications are suggesting that the changes in our gut bacteria may not be helpful to our overall health.

Watch this space, as this gives hope for those who think they are gluten intolerant. They may just need to change the bread they eat and if that doesn’t work have a gut flora transplant.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Medicine.

People get upset with their physicians for not being able to instantly diagnose their ailments.

Recent studies have suggested that physicians diagnose and perscribe the correct treatment only about 30% of the time, and this often means multiple visits before you get the correct treatement.

Often patients get better dispite their treatments.

One reason this occurs, is that many different ailments have the same symptoms and doctors need to rule out the most common illnesses before they try to cure the less common ones.

Still we are much better off than we were less than 100 years ago.

A recent historical documentry pointed out that the practice of medicine only stopped killing more patients than it cured in around 1920.

The percentage is much better now, but a quick search hasn't been able to find the actual percentage medicine still kills.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with lenses.

The purpose of a lens is to focus light.

Children often learn about this is science classes, but before that many children learn to burn holes in cardboard, leaves and wood.

The average lens children play with to burn things focus light up to 1000 times.

The lens of your eye is better at focusing light, and is 2.5 times more effective.

Because the lens of the eye focuses mainly on the fovea, this is why they tell you to not look at the sun.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Entomophagy, or the consumption of insects as food.

Over 1,000 insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world.

Insect eating is now rare in the 'developed' world, but insects remain a popular food in many 'developing' regions,

There have been some studies that have suggested that most of the protein our ancestors ate came from insects, with the extra protein coming from small birds, fish, lizards, snakes and small mammals.

Insects are a good source of protein, vitamins, minerals, and fats.

More importantly, the fats from insects are the mainly the coveted Omega 3 oils we are so encouraged to consume.

Free range chickens have higher Omega 3 oil in their meat and eggs, simply because they are able to consume any insects in their paddocks.

There are individuals and organisations who are suggesting we can fulfil all our dietary protein needs much easier, cheaper and with less impact on the environment, by switching from meat animals to various insects.

Today's interesting fact again has to do with sight.

Our visual cortex processes the information our eyes send to us.

While everyone knows the eye contains rods and cones which allow us to see, most people think that these are evenly distributed throughout the eye.

The Fovea is the small section of the eye that the lense of the eye primarily focuses on, and it contains the majority of cones found in the eye.

You can see how small the Fovea is by extending your arm completely out and lift your thumb.

The area the Fovea sees is about the size of your thumbnail.

You continue to see colour in your perferial vision because your visual cortex fills in the information for you.

If you don't see something in your Fovea, you might not notice it at all.

There is an experiment that involves videoing four or five individuals playing basket ball, and a man in a gorilla suit walks through the play.

When this video has been shown to subjects, and they were told to keep an eye on who has the ball, most watchers miss the gorrilla suit completely.

Today's interesting fact has to do with sight.

While those of us who have sight, take it for granted, we don't see as much as we think we do.

We blink about every 5 seconds, which takes about 150 milliseconds.

Studies have shown that when we blink, we don't see, but the visual cortex edits out these blackouts so we never notice them.

About three times a second and lasting up to 200 milliseconds our eyes make jerky moves which are called saccades.

These movements allow the Fovea, to focus on different parts of our environment and to provide the information to the brain that then fills what we see.

During each of these saccades, while the eyes keep transmitting data to the brain, the brain doesn't process about 100 milliseconds of the information.

The average individual will perform up to 15,000 saccades a day and even if we don't include the blinking, this means that while awake and having our eyes open, our visual system is offline for up to four hours every day.

Tomorrow I'll try cover why we still think we see during these four hours.

You get two today, because I missed a work day out:

Today's interesting fact has to do with Hard Water.

Hard water is considered hard because dissolved mineral content in the water.

When heated this mineral content can precipitate out, and forms the scale found in our kettles and other water heating equipment.

When it comes to cooking, plumbing, washing clothes, boiling kettles, heating water, electric showers and bathing or showering, people don't like hard water.

Part of this dislike comes from the dissolved ions in hard water that makes it hard react with the chemicals in soap to create a sticky scum or curd, which is then left on the skin, clothing, surfaces or hair.

Clothes and sheets washed in hard water often feel rough or even harsh to touch.

But hard water can be good for your health in a number of ways.

A study done in 1984 states:

'New results based on changes that have taken place in water hardness and in cardiovascular death rates between 1961 and 1971 in the county boroughs of England and Wales indicate a significant trend for men, in the direction of decreasing cardiovascular mortality with increasing hardness, but no trend for women. The trend in male mortality appears to be specific to cardiovascular disease. The results are similar to those of the earlier study and support the hypothesis of a weak causal relationship between the hardness of drinking water and mortality from cardiovascular disease.'

With fewer people drinking milk and eating milk by-products, studies have also suggested that hard water be an important source of the calcium and magnesium needed in our diet.

So while soft water can be good for washing clothes, hard water might be better for you to drink.

Today's interesting fact has to do with heart attacks.

Most people don't worry about having a heart attack, even though children as young as five have had them in recent years.

When having a heart attack, many report pain radiating down the left arm, stifness of the arm or neck or even a crushing weight on the chest, sometimes likened to having an elephant sit on you.

But what most people don't know, is the most likely time to have one is between 6 am and 12 noon.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Toes.

Toes assist you while walking, providing balance, weight-bearing, and thrust during each step.

Many people don't realise that toe bones often get broken and the toe's owner often never realises there has been a break.

Today's interesting fact has to do with food prices.

Overall food prices have more than doubled over the past 20 years.

Items such as coffee and tea have risen much faster than many other food stuffs, but perhaps the greatest increase has been in bottled water.

But even stapes, such as wheat, rice and potatoes have also had massive increases.

A sack of rice which was purchased two years ago for £5.00, costs more that £10.00 this year.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Tea.

What is the difference between black tea and green tea?

Black tea has been oxidized.

In the distant past, this was done by the application of a mould.

Now it is oxidized using machinery specially developed for the process.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Cotton.

Cotton has been used for garments and ropes thousands of years.

Old World cotton has short strands.

When the Spanish went into the Caribbean they found that the cotton used by the Carib and Arawak Indians had long strands.

Europeans took seeds of the Caribbean cotton and exported it all over the world, where it was crossed with short strand cotten, to create the hybrids of cotton we use today.

Today's interesting fact has to do with dog's wool.

Which would you think is warmer, cardigans created from wool from sheep or lambs, or wool from dogs.

The answer might not be what you think.

Dog's wool is better at keeping you warm, it is up to 80% warmer than sheep or lambs wool.

You might not be able to purchase Chiengora garments, but there are plenty of examples on the internet on how to create your own garments.

Dog wool was the main fiber spun on the North American continent before the Spaniards introduced sheep.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the Lionfish.

The Lionfish comes from the pacific ocean.

It has sharp spines that contain venom which mean that it has few preditors.

It has become a pest in the Caribbean, where it has no natural enemies.

It seems a few were released from aquariums in the US and are now devistating Caribbean ecologies.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Films.

If you are into action films, animated or ones made from comics, it is important to watch to the end of the credits.

Often, these films will have spoilers at the end of the film, which sometimes makes part of the film make more sense, or will set up the reason for a sequel.

For example, Thor has reached the cinema, so if you go to watch it make sure you watch the film to the last credit.

Today's interesting fact has to do with GPS.

GPS stands for Global Positioning System.

GPS is being used by a number of systems these days.

Almost everyone knows about SatNavs and how it makes things easier for drivers to get from one place to another, and they have replaced maps for many.

But there are other systems that use GPS, even though they never move, because of the exact timings that can be obtained from the system.

Three satelites are used to determine the position of the object using GPS, and a fourth satelite then provides the exact time.

That exact time, is used in traffic systems in coordinating traffic lights, in hospitals in coordinating medical machinery, by telephone systems in the masts that send singnals to your mobile telephone.

A recent experiment involving GPS blocking in California by the US Navy caused no end of issues with these systems.

China is producing GPS blockers and these are on sale through the internet throughout the world.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the Small-leaved Lime.

Tilia cordata is a tree that grows through much of Europe and Southern Britian and it has been planted in many areas as an ornimental.

Car drivers are well aware of the honey dew that sometimes drips on their cars if carelessly parked in the wrong places, e.g. under the trees in late spring.

This honey dew comes from aphids that can attack the trees when the leaves are young.

The young leaves are edible and were traditionaly used in Britian in spring salads and as a replacement to lettuce in salads.

Lime tree honey is considered a delicacy by some and the flowers can be made into a tea which is supposed to have medicinal properties.

It is thought to be an anti-inflammatory and has been traditionally used in respiratory issues: such as colds, fevers, flues, sore throat, bronchitis, and cough.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the calorie.

When asked, a lot of people don't know what a calorie is.

A calorie is a unit of energy.

It is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree C, or around 4.2 joules of energy.

This calorie is sometimes called the small calorie or the gram calorie.

In most 'scientific' applications, the joule is now used instead.

The calorie is mostly used now as a unit of food energy.

To make things confusing for dieters, there is also the Calorie, sometimes called the Large Calorie, Kilogram calorie, the kilocalorie, Dietary calorie or food calorie.

The Calorie (always denoted with an uppercase or capital C) is the energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree C.

Calories in food is determined by calculations, developed by Wilbur Olin Atwater and associated in the 19th Century, where they compared the energy produce by burning and estimating how much energy is used after the foodstuff passed through an alimentary canal.

We have learnt recently that the number of calories that can be removed from food increases with the amount of processing a foodstuff receives.

This sadly means that the calories listed on many food packets can incorrect, by as much as 25% and those of us who diet, must keep this in mind when calculating how many calories we are consuming.

Today's interesting fact has to do with ties and high blood pressure.

Recently medical research has confirmed that wearing a part of the traditional western formal business attire can contribute to a serious health risk.

A tie increases pressure in two ways.

1) It places pressure on the glands of the neck that help the body control blood pressure and cause an increase in that way.

2) It constricts the blood vessels of the neck and the restriction this causes creates a feed back to the heart which then raises the blood pressure to get the correct amount of blood into the brain.

Both of these have been shown by the increase of pressure within the eye.

There is evidence that it can also cause Glaucoma.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Absinthe.

Absinthe is a high alcohol content drink that also has extracts of wormwood, green anise and sweet fennel within it.

It was very popular as an alcoholic drink in late 19th- and early 20th-century France.

Because of the wormwood extracts Absinthe has historically been portrayed as dangerously addictive and hallucinogenic.

One chemical, thujone, which is present in small quantities, has been was blamed for the alleged harmful effects.

Because of accepted belief that Absinthe was considered addictive, by 1915, Absinthe was banned in the United States and in most European countries.

However, recent research has shown that wormwood is not addictive nor a hallucinogen.

An examination of a few of the remaining Absinthe bottles from the 19th and early 20th century, it seems that the hallucinations users suffered were more likely to come about from the methyl alcohol also found in the bottles.

Today's interesting fact has to do with sleep and the brain.

In our busy modern lives, many of us find ourselves waking up tired.

There have been many proposed reasons for this lack of restful sleep.

It has been suggested that modern lighting has caused the problems, by resetting our body clocks.

It has been shown that bright blue light will reset our circadian rhythms.

Florescent and LED lights tend to be in the bluer range.

It has been suggested that looking at our bright computer screens and mobile telephones late at night does just this.

They have been studying the brain using MRI to determine what sections of the brain do various tasks and how they interact.

Several studies that have shown when we have a lack of sleep, sections of the brain can take a nap without our realising it.

These naps cause a reduction in ability, especially when doing repetitive tasks.

People will often do the 'wrong' things when these naps occur.

Drivers lose the ability to drive and have accidents, operators of machinery can mis-use their equipment, writers can type nonsense, and speakers can find they talk nonsense.

With a good night sleep, they find that the brain doesn't nap and accidents then are less likely to occur.

Today's interesting fact has to do with bicycles and trucks.

In the UK, 50% of cyclist deaths are caused by collisions with Lorries (Trucks or 18 wheelers in the US) which are only 5% of UK traffic.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Echocardiograms.

An Echocardiogram is a sound picture of the heart.

Until recently, it displayed slices of the heart to allow doctors to see if you have issues with the heart.

With the increased computer power available, three dimensional images and even movies have been created.

It can also show blood flow and can pinpoint where arteries are clogged.

It is usually known as an Echo, as ECG usually refers to an Electrocardiogram.

I have just had one and can confirm that it doesn't hurt.

Today's interesting fact has to do with snakes.

Snakes have two hemipenes, or two half penis, that are stored inverted within the tail of the male.

One hemipenis is everted for reproduction by erectile tissue and one is used in mating.

They used to think that snakes (and lizards) alternated the one they use between matings.

But it turns out from recent observations that most snakes seem to be right handed.

In addition to having a forked tongue, the snakes hemipenes are also forked, and these forks are thought to help the male snake to grasp the female internally and aid in completing copulation.

Today's interesting fact has to do with Termites.

For a long time entomologists argued over where on the tree of life termites came from.

It was often argued that termites were realted to or even desended from a type of cockroach.

Cockroaches and termites share a few common elements, but then so do most insects.

One thing they share is the Fat Body, a white mass that fills much of the abdomen of many insects.

The Fat Body has two types of cells, adipocytes filled with fat gobules and mycetocytes, which are filled with mutualistic bacteria.

Many insects, if you kill these bacteria, can continue to live and will eventually replace their bacteria.

But with cockroaches, if you kill the bacteria, the cockroaches and termites will usually die.

It seems that the bacteria in both insects are almost the same, closely related species.

When until they genetically sequenced the insects and compared them, it was shown that termites are actualy a type of cockroach, desendents of a type of wood eating cockroach.

Nick Myall doesn't like spiders, so he asked me to do something else today.

So, today's interesting fact has to do with Cockroaches.

Cockroaches have been around for at least 300 million years, which is 70 million years before the first identified dinosaurs.

Their overall basic design has not changed in all that time.

The big difference between fossilized examples and present day ones is the loss of a long ovipositor (egg laying tube) in the current crop.

Of the 5000 odd species so far identified, only five try to inhabit our homes.

The big four are: German cockroach, Brown-banded cockroach, American cockroach and Oriental cockroach.

The identifying the names by places may be misleading, as they are found all over the world and there is no evidence as to where they originated.

The fifth inhabitant is a new arrival, which we can positively identify its origin, and that is the Australian roach, which has only recently decided to join our households and is so far mainly located on that island continent.

Cockroaches can spread disease, and lots of people are allergic to their faeces.

Cockroaches eat anything, including human hair, calluses and nails as well as other cockroaches.

Sailors are reported to have sometimes worn gloves to protect their fingernails.

It turns out that Nick isn't that enamoured with Cockroaches either.