Interesting Facts

According to studies conducted at King’s College London, junk food kills bacteria that protect against obesity, heart disease,  cancer,  diabetes, inflammatory bowel conditions and autism. (The human gut contains around 3,500 difference microbial species, which together make up some three pounds in weight, but a limited range of highly processed foods, rather than those found in a balanced, healthy diet, can wipe out the number of stomach flora by more than a third. Other studies suggest that Belgian Beer, garlic, coffee, leeks and celery are ideal foods for promoting healthy gut flora. Mmm - beer.)

According to a study carried out at the  University of Tokyo, compared with 13 other mammal species studied, African elephants have the most genes related to smell: 1,948. (That's more than twice the number of olfactory genes in domestic dogs and five times more than in humans. The following animals were tested in the battle of the schnozes:- Elephant - 1948 Rat - 1207 Cow - 1196 Mouse - 1130 Horse - 1066 Dog - 811 Guinea Pig - 796 Rabbit - 768 Human - 396 Chimpanzee - 380 Marmoset - 366 Macaque - 309 Orang-utan - 296 So, why don't we use sniffer elephants or even sniffer rats?) Source - The Wright Stuff

White supremacist Craig Cobb has achieved national notoriety in the USA, by attempting to turn Leith, North Dakota into an all-white enclave. (The town of Leith has even gone so far as to create its own national socialist hunting flag, complete with stag horns and only a small “discreet” swastika.  If they tried that in Germany, they'd be arrested. However, what makes this story so much fun is, according to the Telegraph, Mr Cobb may now be unable to meet the racial purity benchmark he set to settle in his own town after the tests showed he was 14 per cent sub-Saharan African.  His interview on the Trisha Show is a must see (normally I'm not a fan of daytime TV, but this one is priceless). DNA tests are so cool. If you don't believe me, read this:  http://web.mit.edu/racescience/in_media/what_dna_says_about_human/) BTW - You will hear him spout the old "Oil and water don't mix" phrase.  However:- http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn340...

Cats have 32 muscles in each ear. (This allows them to rotate their ears for directional hearing, and to move each ear independently of the other, as well as lay them down flat to warn us they are in a bad mood. Humans only have 3 muscles in each ear, but some people can wiggle their ears. Can you? PS - I can't, even though my mum could.) #caturday  ;)

You can fit over 3,200 22nm transistors across the diameter of an average human hair. (I haven't tried it, but Intel told me, so it must be true.)

“Rex” – the world’s most complete bionic man cost a million dollars to make. ( He consists of a prosthetic face, hips, knees, feet and hands, all of which are commercially available. Other off-the-shelf items include an artificial retina, cochlea and heart. The robotics team Shadow, who built Rex, believe they can now replicate about two-thirds of the human body. They said, “There are some vital organs missing, like the stomach, but 60 to 70 per cent of a human has effectively been rebuilt.” )

Humans have chins (well most do), but elephants are the only other animals with a chin.  (So the wolf could have said to the three little pigs, "What chinny chin chin?")

The vast majority of the human genome plays a vital function by regulating the genes that build and maintain the body. (This debunks the myth of "junk" DNA, a term coined 40 years ago to describe the part of the genome that does not contain any genes, but it is in fact an elaborate patchwork of regulatory sequences that act as a huge operating system for controlling the genome. So, be careful of calling stuff you don't fully understand "junk".) The research was carried out by hundreds of researchers from 32 institutes around the world and the findings published in a series of 30 research papers in Nature, Science and other scientific journals.

According to quarterly magazine Delayed Gratification, to date 531 people have travelled into space. (The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight varies, but The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) defines spaceflight as any flight over 100 kilometres (62 miles) high. This definition is recognized by most countries.  Funnily there's a list of 528 people on Wiki, but the edition of the magazine I read listed 531 people.  I managed to find a copy of the original PDF, but can't read the font and I'm not sure who the extra 3 people are.  Anyone with better eyesight is welcome to look.) PDF Here

According to Swedish researchers, Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixon of Uppsala University, the chivalrous concept of "women and children first" is just a myth. (The Swedish researchers analyzed 18 of the world's most famous maritime disasters, ranging from the HMS Birkenhead that grounded in the Indian Ocean in 1852 to the MV Bulgaria tourist ship that sank on Russia's Volga River last year. Analyzing passenger lists, logs and registers, they found that men actually have a distinct survival advantage: Of the 15,000 people who died in the 18 accidents, only 17.8 percent of the women survived compared with 34.5 percent of the men, and sadly, in three of the shipwrecks, all the women died. In fact it gets even worse, the idea of going down with the ship is called into question too, as their studies have shown that captains and their crew are 18.7% more likely to survive a shipwreck than their passengers. So, it looks as if the expression `every man for himself...

According to the Peace Corp's website, of all the water on earth, 97.5 percent is salt water. Of the remaining 2.5 percent of fresh water, some 70 percent is frozen in the polar ice caps. The other 30 percent is mostly present as soil moisture or lies in underground aquifers. (This means that less than 1 percent of the world's fresh water (or only about 0.007 percent of all the water on Earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.)

Human fingerprints can be worn down, particularly among manual labourers, typists and musicians. (What about bloggers?)