Interesting Facts

According to research published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, fish can remember faces. (By training archerfish with food pellets as a reward,  with a random sequence of 44 faces, scientists were able to teach them to spit at a particular face, with an average accuracy of between 81 and 86 percent.  A researcher Cait Newport said "Obviously the first takeaway is that they could do it. They were distinguishing something really complicated. This also shows that the fish have surprisingly good memories. It certainly challenges the whole idea of a fish with a 30-second memory." Did she really use the word takeaway?  I hope she hasn't trained her fish to recognise English.) Source

According to researchers at the Emory School of Medicine in Georgia, fear can be transmitted from a father to his offspring through his sperm. (They have shown that if mice are taught to fear a certain smell this triggers chemical changes in their sperm.These changes then alter the makeup of their children and grandchildren's brains, causing them to fear the same smell. This could explain my fear of flying, and is bound to open up the whole nature vs nurture debate again.)

According to a team of physicists we now have the “clearest evidence yet” that our universe is a hologram. (According to an article in Nature, the conflict as to why Albert Einstein's theory of gravity clashes with quantum physics, could be solved if the Universe were a holographic projection. The theory is that the three dimensions we perceive are actually just “painted” onto the cosmological horizon - the boundary of the known universe. I really struggled with the title for this one!) Source

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...

Switzerland does not have a law against public nudity. (However, it it does have a law against public indecency, and so in Switzerland you can be fined for hiking naked in the mountains. Personally I would have thought the law of nature would discourage this practise, as it gets very cold up there.) Source

According to a study by Nature's Calendar, Britain's native trees are producing ripe fruit, on average, 18 days earlier than a decade ago, probably as a result of climate change. (The most marked change was seen in the rowan tree, which according to Finnish mythology was the first tree on earth:- In the yard there grows a Rowan.  Thou with reverent care should'st tend it.  Holy is the tree there growing.  Holy likewise are its branches.  On its boughs the leaves are holy.  And its berries yet more holy. Excerpt from The Kalevala ,  a compilation of Finnish folk lore  According to the study, rowan berries are now ready to eat nearly a month earlier than 10 years ago.)

If left alone, 70% of birthmarks gradually fade away. (It's always best to let nature take its course.)