Random Facts!

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

Did you know

An elephant can be pregnant for up to two years.

Fish as Good as College Students in Numbers Test

Mosquitofish can "count" to a hundred but have trouble with ratios, study finds.
Are you as smart as a mosquitofish?

According to a new study, college students showed roughly the same numerical skills as the small fish when presented with a laboratory test.

Mosquitofish, freshwater fish with a taste for mosquito larvae, are highly social. When a mosquitofish finds itself alone, its top priority becomes finding others. A previous study showed that the fish can, in fact, "count"—differentiating between numerical quantities in a lab experiment.

The new study shows that the fish can not only tell the difference between small numbers such as 4 and 8, but they can also differentiate between quantities as large as 100 and 200.

"You just don't expect interesting results like this when dealing with animals like fish," said study leader Christian Agrillo of the University of Padova in Italy. "We thought this was really incredible."
But numerical skills break down for the fish when the ratios between two numbers change—an effect that was also seen among human volunteers.
Fish That Can "Count" to a Hundred
For the initial experiment, lone fish were trained in the lab to associate a door bearing a certain number of geometric shapes with the path to rejoining a larger group.

The fish were then placed in tanks where they had to chose between one of two identical doors bearing different numbers of symbols. For example, four shapes might be associated with door A and eight shapes with door B.

At the beginning of the test, the fish did not know where to go, and they chose randomly. Over time, however, the fish started to chose the correct door more often than by chance alone.

The new study repeated this experiment—but then the researchers started using bigger numbers of shapes on the doors.

"It was kind of funny, most of them appeared to be surprised when we switched from small numbers to hundreds. They swam inside the tank for a while, looking at the new stimuli as if they were trying to understand what was going on," Agrillo said.
 
"However, after a short while they started to solve the task as well."

Ratios Boggle Fish and Humans

As the researchers tinkered with the amounts on the doors, they found that when the sets of shapes were closer in number, the fish were less successful.

For example, when the ratio between the shapes on the two doors was 1:2 (8 versus 16) or 2:3 (8 versus 12), the fish chose the correct door more often than by chance. But when the ratio became 3:4 (9 versus 12), the fish showed no indication that they could detect a difference.

Keen to see how the numerical skills of fish compare to those of humans, the researchers asked a group of 25 undergraduate students to engage in a test that presented them with the same types of challenges.
The test forced the students to determine the difference bet

While humans were universally more accurate than fish, they showed the same degraded ability to judge number differences as ratios shifted from 2:3 to 3:4.

According to Agrillo and colleagues, the results add to evidence that humans, fish, and other vertebrates share the same abilities for processing numbers as a distant but common ancestor.

5 Famous Scientists Dismissed as Morons in Their Time

Every nutjob in the world with some out-there theory thinks he's Galileo, rejected for daring to think different. Virtually all of them are, in fact, simply insane.

Yet, there have been brilliant rebels who put their own world-changing ideas on the line, only to end up like Doc Brown in his alternate timeline: humiliated, ridiculed, ignored and/or straight driven to insanity.

Gregor Mendel

You probably know Mendel as the guy who pioneered the science of genetics, and for keeping eighth-graders busy while science teachers watch porn at their desks. Anybody with a high school diploma has filled out those dominant/recessive trait Punnett squares ...
... though astute readers are probably wondering why that technique is called a Punnett square if it predicts patterns Mendel discovered.

What you probably didn't know was that before making his revolutionary discovery, Gregor Mendel flunked his ass out of school and resigned himself to a quiet life as the abbot of a monastery. It had an extensive experimental garden and there Mendel patiently spent the next seven years of his life breeding and cross-breeding peas.

He carefully documented his work and developed what would eventually be known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance. Then he wrote it up and got it published in an lesser-known journal, the Journal of the Brno Natural History Society in 1866.

His Genius Was Rewarded By ...
A quiet life of complete anonymity. Mendel's work was read by about zero people, even after he took it upon himself to contact the highest minds of his time by personally sending them copies of his theory. It turns out he would have been better off writing it on a paper bag filled with dog shit and leaving the whole flaming mess on porches.

Why did they ignore him? Because the greatest minds of his time couldn't understand him. It wasn't until 16 years after his death that three independent botanists rediscover Mendel's work and started the genetics ball rolling.

Ignaz Semmelweis

We've brought up poor old Semmelweis once before, but just in case you don't have a running loop of Cracked articles going through your head, here's the recap: Back in 1847, Semmelweis found himself in charge of two maternity clinics. The first clinic was a teaching school, with medical students learning birthing, autopsying and everything in between. The second clinic was intended for women who couldn't afford health care and was serviced by midwives, not actual doctors or students.

Yet it was the second clinic that women of all social statuses begged to get into. Why? Because if they went to the first clinic they'd have a 10 percent chance of dying of puerperal fever, a six percent greater rate of death than in the midwife-run hospital. Women literally had a better chance of surviving a birth on the street than in the first clinic. After an exhaustive study, Semmelweis figured out that medical students were smothered in disease cooties from cadavers, and that maybe, just maybe, they should wash their hands in between the autopsy room and the birthing rooms.

He insisted students perform a simple chlorine wash after handling dead guys and immediately got the death rate down to one to two percent. With numbers like that, you'd think the whole continent of Europe, much less the medical community, would have crowned him "king of live babies" or something.

His Genius Was Rewarded By ...
First dementia, then a beatdown at an insane asylum, then death, by virtually the same disease he had eradicated in his own hospital.

Semmelweis didn't just have the disregard of his contemporaries, he had their flat-out scorn. Maybe it was because he didn't get around to explaining himself on paper right away, so no one understood what hand-washing had to do with keeping people alive. Some doctors were actually insulted that he was accusing Viennese medical students being dirty enough to kill people.
Within 14 years of his groundbreaking discovery, Semmelweis just stopped giving a fuck. He got drunk all the time and called all his detractors "ignoramuses" and "murderers." He started chilling with prostitutes and lashing out at family. That last part proved to be a bad move, because in 1865 they had him committed to an insane asylum, where he was promptly beat up and stuck in a dark cellar.

He died two weeks later. It took another 20 years and Louis Pasteur's germ theory for the rest of the world to come around to the concept of washing your hands to keep from getting sick.

George Zweig

The year 1964 was a watershed year by any measure. The Beatles arrived, the Civil Rights Act was passed, Nicolas Cage was born and in two separate parts of the world, two separate scientists proposed the existence of quarks, the teeny-tiny subatomic particles that combine to form matter. If you've been paying attention, you know one of these guys is about to get screwed. (Hint: It's George Zweig.)

Zweig had three things going against him in 1964. One, he was a young graduate student, unpublished and unproven. Two, he was working at a particle research center in Geneva. You'd think that would be an advantage, but it turns out his institute had a stringent model for publication, and his paper on quarks, which he called "aces," didn't meet its standards (even though he had come up with a much cooler name for the particle). And three, an older scientist from his grad school proposed the exact same theory at the exact same time and because of his stature was able to publish that exact same theory with the exact same publication that rejected Zweig's.
At first, both men were called crazy for their insane notions of invisible particles. They had no model of behavior for the buggers and no methods of ever actually looking at them. But eventually the science world came around, and by 1969, Zweig's rival was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work. As for Zweig.

His Genius Was Rewarded By ...
Being blackballed by a major university and accusations of being a "charlatan."

It wasn't until the 1970s that anyone could actually prove the existence of quarks, and by that time, the Nobel Prize committee felt it had already given the little particles enough attention, so it was reluctant to revisit the subject. Nevertheless, in 1977, Zweig and his rival were both nominated, but neither won. Zweig ended up changing his field of study to neurobiology, presumably believing that if he made a seminal contribution to every area of science, he'd eventually get credit for something.

Albert Einstein

Trying to convince you that Albert Einstein was rejected in any way during his lifetime let alone a moron is a hard sell, considering that he was one of the most famous men on the planet at the time. But buried deep in a lifetime of utter brilliance, Einstein was saddled with one big mistake. One that it turned out wasn't a mistake at all.

To understand, you have to know a little bit about Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Not a whole lot, just the fact that it didn't allow for a static universe. Einstein believed the universe had to be static, or else the forces of gravity would cause the whole universe to contract onto itself, which it apparently wasn't doing. So, to make up for this weird conundrum, he invented something called thecosmological constant, an unknown, unchanging force that allowed him to have his cake (General Theory of Relativity) and eat it, too (stand by a static-universe model).

But not too long after Einstein came up with the cosmological constant, Edwin Hubble burst his little unmoving universe bubble by finding evidence that the whole shebang was expanding. Einstein called the cosmological constant his "biggest blunder" and went to his grave thinking he was an idiot for having proposed it. And so did everyone else. For a while.


His Genius Was Rewarded By ...

Einstein didn't get heaped with scorn like some of the other geniuses on this list, so he got off with a little self-deprecation with a side of regret. And he also dropped the whole idea of the cosmological constant. But here's the thing -- it turns out he may have been right all along. Not about the universe being static, of course, but that this mysterious, unknown entity existed in the first place.
In the 1990s, scientists discovered that the universe was expanding faster than they had previously thought and that the rate of expansion was being fueled by a mysterious, unknown entity. There are several contenders up for consideration as the cause, but everyone's favorite? You guessed it: Einstein's cosmological constant. His math of the constant magically fit the bill. Also because you never go wrong when you bet on Einstein.


Ludwig Boltzmann 

Ludwig Boltzmann had the unfortunate luck of being born with a genius brain at the wrong time. Back in the 19th century, there was a huge debate over the nature of matter. Boltzmann not only had the audacity to presuppose the existence of atoms at a time when the atomic model was still controversial among scientists, but also built every one of his brilliant theories as if there was no debate at all. How brilliant? Hang on to your test tubes, because thing are about to get sciencey.

For one, he pioneered the study of statistical thermodynamics, which is a field of physics that provides a framework for predicting how a large number of particles will behave in a system. So, let's say you're camping and you start a fire. Boltzmann was the guy who tried to figure out what the crap was going on in those logs on a molecular level that allowed the fire to kindle, and he used fancy math formulas to figure it out. His work ultimately paved the way for the field of quantum mechanics, which eventually paved the way for the greatest time travel show ever.

His Genius Was Rewarded By ...

Death. He got death.
Back then, defending the existence of atoms was akin to defending creationist version of the origins of man today. Boltzmann wasn't just forced to defend something that would be accepted as fact within a few years, he was shamed for his stubborn refusal to yield and for his so-called materialist beliefs.
Nobody ever told scientists that nonmaterial science is already called philosophy. A long series of uneven debates left nearly every other supporter of atoms silent, leaving Boltzmann as their chief defender. Even colleagues who originally agreed with him began to question atoms' existence when his work seemingly undermined previously understood laws of physics.

The emotional burden of being the only right guy in the world, coupled with what was probably undiagnosed bipolar disorder, proved too much for Boltzmann to handle, and he hung himself in 1906, only three years before another scientist proved the undeniable existence of atoms. Nice job, science.

Did you Know!!!

There are approximately 7,000 feathers on an eagle.

Diabetics could soon 'grow their own insulin'

Scientists may have found a way of curing diabetes - at least in men.

They have used tiny slivers of testicular tissue to make millions of healthy replacements for the faulty cells behind the condition.

In experiments on mice, grafts of the lab-grown pancreatic cells produced enough insulin to control blood sugar levels in diabetic mice.

Although the work is at an early stage, the American researchers believe it could lead to a cure for men and boys with type 1 diabetes in perhaps just five years.

However, British experts have urged caution, saying that any cure is still many years away.
Diabetes occurs when the pancreas does not make enough insulin, a hormone key to the conversion of sugar into energy, or the insulin that is made does not work properly.

The 250,000 Britons with type1, or childhood, diabetes do not make any insulin at all and so need to take regular injections to stop blood sugar levels from fluctuating wildly.
In the latest study, immature cells that would normally go on to form sperm were turned into healthy insulin-producing cells.

The researchers, from Georgetown University Medical Centre, in Washington DC, started with tiny samples of tissue from human testicles.

Using a cocktail of vitamins and growth factors, they transformed them first into stem, or ‘master, cells, and then into the beta islet cells that produce insulin in the pancreas.
The process took around five weeks, the American Society of Cell Biology’s annual conference heard.
Layers of pancreatic cells were then grafted onto diabetic mice, where they produced enough insulin to control blood sugar levels for a week.

While this might not seem long, the researchers say it should be possible to make the cells work for much longer - and for them to produce enough insulin to benefit human diabetics.
Researcher Dr Ian Gallicano believes the testicular cells, or spermatogonial stem cells, could succeed whether other potential diabetes cures have failed.

He said: ‘No stem cells, adult or embryonic, have been induced to secrete enough insulin yet to cure diabetes in humans, but we know that spermatogonial stem cells have the potential to do what we want them to do, and we know how to improve their yield.’

Using a man’s own cells as the source of the treatment would sidestep any chance of the tissue being rejected by the body.
They hope to test the technique on men for the first time within months. If large-scale trials show it to be safe and effective, the transplant technique could be in widespread us in as little as five years.
Adapting the technique to eggs instead of sperm could allow female diabetics to eventually benefit too, the researchers believe.
Although the work is focused on type 1 diabetes, the technique may also be applicable to some cases of type 2 diabetes, the more common form of the condition.

This type of diabetes tends to affect people over 40 and occurs when not enough insulin is produced, or the insulin that is made doesn't work properly.
Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, welcomed the breakthrough but cautioned it may be many years before patients can benefit.

He said: ‘Yet again, a world-class team of scientists has suggested another novel cell-based therapy for diabetes.
‘The question is how to turn such great discoveries into safe effective cures for people with diabetes - a process that has a high failure rate and takes years. It is time for less hype and more pragmatism.’
The charity Diabetes UK was more blunt, describing the research as ‘a tiny, incremental advance’ in the search for a cure for diabetes.

Source:

Are Tomatoes and Cucumbers Vegetables?

Neither tomatoes nor cucumbers are vegetables — they're fruits. The debate about whether a tomato is a fruit or not actually made it to the Supreme Court in 1883 in Nix v Hedden. The tomato was declared to be botanically a fruit but for all other purposes a vegetable.

More on fruits and vegetables:

The biggest difference between fruits and vegetables is the presence of seeds. Tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins and peppers all have seeds, so they are all technically fruits.

The strawberry is actually not a berry. It is closely related to the rose family, and the edible berry part is actually what is known as a "false fruit." The true berry of the strawberry is the little black specks that contain the seeds.

Eggplants and avocados are technically classified as berries.

Which Occupations Have the Highest Divorce Rates?

Most people think that policemen have the highest divorce rates, but actually, it's not true. In fact, law enforcement officers are about three times less likely to divorce than dancers and choreographers, bartenders andmassage therapists. According to the U.S. census, only about 15% of law enforcement officers are divorced, but almost half of all dancers, bartenders and massage therapists are. The law enforcement positions with the highest divorce rate are, surprisingly, fish and game wardens.

Other facts on divorce and occupation:

Other occupations with high divorce rates include casino workers, telephone operators and nurses. Though it's not certain, it is thought that the stress of such jobs leads to a higher divorce rate.
The occupations with the lowest divorce rates are agricultural and nuclear engineers, clergy and optometrists.
Married couples working in the same occupation are more likely to divorce than those working in different professions.

10 Foods That Can Help You Sleep

Trying to get more shut-eye? Take a look at your diet. Eating the right foods in the hours before you hit the hay may help you fall asleep faster, say experts, and even improve the quality of your sleep. Keep reading for your get-sleepy grocery list, and remember to stop noshing two hours before bedtime to give your body enough time to properly digest.

Almonds

“Almonds are a winner,” says Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, medical director of the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers, and author of the bestselling book From Fatigued to Fantastic! “They contain magnesium which promotes both sleep and muscle relaxation,” he says. “And they have the added benefit of supplying proteins that can help maintain a stable blood sugar level while sleeping, and help promote sleep by switching you from your alert adrenaline cycle to your rest-and-digest cycle.” Try this bedtime snack: Have a tablespoon of almond butter or a 1-ounce portion of almonds to help your body relax. Photo: Shutterstock



Tea 

Yes, avoiding all caffeine in the evening hours is key, but some decaf varieties can help get you into sleep mode, says Dr. Teitelbaum. “Chamomile tea is a very helpful and safe sleep aid,” he says, adding that green tea is another good choice. “Green tea contains theanine, which helps promote sleep. Just be sure you get a decaf green tea if drinking it at bedtime.” Experts recommend trying a 1-cup serving of the hot stuff. Photo: Thinkstock






Miso Soup 

You love to order this comforting, broth-based soup in Japanese restaurants, but keeping a few 8-ounce packs of instant miso soup at home may be key when you’re having trouble falling asleep, says Stella Metsovas, CN, a nutritionist in Laguna Beach, California. Here’s why: Miso contains amino acids that may boost the production of melatonin, a natural hormone that can help induce the yawns. Bonus: Research shows that warm liquids like soup and tea may also relieve cold symptoms, helping you sleep better when you're feeling under the weather. Photo: Shutterstock


Banana 

Worried about falling asleep tonight? Have a banana before bed, says Saundra Dalton-Smith, MD, an internist and the author of Set Free to Live Free: Breaking Through the 7 Lies Women Tell Themselves. “Bananas are an excellent source of magnesium and potassium, which help to relax overstressed muscles. They also contain tryptophan, which convert to serotonin and melatonin, the brain’s key calming hormones." Try this tasty and incredibly simple bedtime smoothie: Blend one banana with one cup of milk or soy milk (and ice, if desired). Pour and enjoy!Photo: Shutterstock






Dairy 

Yogurt, milk and cheese do contain tryptophan, notes Dr. Dalton-Smith, but also have a surprising sleep-inducing nutrient: “Calcium is effective in stress reduction and stabilization of nerve fibers, including those in the brain." That means a serving of your favorite Greek yogurt before bed can not only help you sleep, but also help you stop worrying about the weird thing your boss said earlier at work. Photo: Thinkstock









Oatmeal 

You eat it for breakfast, but could a bowl of warm oatmeal help you get more rest? Yes, says Stephan Dorlandt, a clinical nutritionist based in Southern California. “Think about it,” he says. “Oatmeal is warm,soft, soothing, easy to prepare, inexpensive and nourishing. It’s rich in calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon and potassium—the who's who of nutrients known to support sleep.” But go easy on the sweeteners; too much sugar before bed can have an anti-calming effect. Instead, consider topping your bowl with fruit, like bananas (see above). Photo: Shutterstock



Hard-Cooked Egg 

If you have trouble staying asleep at night, it may be because you didn’t eat a pre-bedtime snack high in protein, or perhaps your snack was too high in simple, high-sugar carbohydrates, like cake and candy. “The problem with simple carbs is that they can put you on a ‘sugar roller coaster’ and drop your blood sugar while you're sleeping, causing you to wake at 2 or 3 in the morning,” says Dr. Teitelbaum. A better bet? “Eat an egg, cheese, nuts or other protein-rich snack instead,” he says, “so you can not only fall asleep, but stay asleep.” Photo: Shutterstock


Edamame

Craving a salty snack before bed? Turn to lightly salted edamame, says Dr. Dalton-Smith—especially if you’re dealing with menopause-related symptoms. “The natural estrogen-like compounds found in soy-based products can be very beneficial in controlling those nighttime hot flashes that can disturb your sleep,” she says. If it’s crackers and dip you’re craving, try making this easy edamame recipe: In a food processor, blend together 2 cups of shelled, cooked edamame with 1 tsp salt, a drizzle of olive oil and 1 clove garlic (optional) until smooth. Photo: Thinkstock



Cherries 

 Oddly, a glass of cherry juice may be an effective way to fall asleep faster, says a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and University of Rochester. In their study, they found that cherries, particularly tart cherries, naturally boosted the body’s supply of melatonin, which helped people with insomnia. While the jury is still out on how much juice or how many cherries are needed to make you sleepy, experts say sipping a glass of cherry juice (available at most natural foods stores) or having a serving of fresh, frozen or dried cherries before bedtime couldn’t hurt. Photo: Thinkstock

Cereal 

There’s no need to feel guilty about having a small bowl of cereal before bed, especially if it’s a low-sugar, whole-grain cereal. Not only is it a healthy snack (make sure you top it with milk to give your body the protein it needs), but it may also help you snooze. “Complex carbohydrate–rich foods increase the availability of tryptophan in the bloodstream, increasing the sleep-inducing effects,” says Dr. Dalton-Smith. Bonus: Top your bowl with a sprinkling of dried cherries (see above) for extra help catching your zzz's.


Source: Shine magazine 

Blue whales can eat half a million calories in a single mouthful

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. Ironically, it sustains its massive bulk by eating some of the smallest creatures in the ocean – krill. A foraging whale lunges into a swarm of these shrimp-like animals, accelerating to high speed with its mouth open at a right angle. Pushed back by the rush of water, its mouth expands and its tongue (itself the size of an elephant) inverts to create more room.

The whale engulfs up to 110 tonnes of water and any krill within is filtered out and swallowed.

There’s every reason to think that filtering out small prey is an incredibly efficient way of feeding. The largest fish, both living (the whale shark and basking shark) and extinct (Leedsichthys), are all filter-feeders.

 And the biggest of the whales – the blue and fin – both use this technique. But no one has ever put the reputed efficiency of filter-feeding to the test, by calculating how much energy a blue whale spends on its lunges and how much it gets in return. Jeremy Goldbogen at the University of British Columbia is the first.

Goldbogen tagged 265 blue whales off the coast of California and Mexico, attaching recording devices to their backs when they surface. The data-loggers recorded the whales’ position, their acceleration, and the noise and pressure of the surrounding water. The noise was important – by measuring the sound of water rushing past the animal, Goldbergen could work out how fast it was travelling.

In total, he managed to record over 650 feeding lunges. On each one, the whale accelerates to a top speed of 8 miles per hour in less than a minute. If that seems low, bear in mind that this is an animal that weighs 180 tonnes; for comparison, Michael Phelps swam the 100m butterfly at a measly 4.4mph. Every attempt costs a huge amount of energy, around 770 to 1900 calories. Worse still, the water that rushes into the whale’s mouth produces so much drag that it grinds to a virtual halt. To lunge again, the whale needs to build up speed from a standstill, and it will do so around three or four times on a single ten-minute dive.

Nonetheless, when Goldbogen plugged the data from his recorders into a simulation of a feeding whale, he found that the lunge is staggeringly efficient. Despite the massive outlay in energy, the whale easily recoups anywhere from 6 to 240 times that amount, depending on how big it is and how tightly packed its krill targets are.
If a big whale attacks a particularly dense swarm, it can swallow up to 500 kilograms of krill, eating 457,000 calories in a single monster mouthful and getting back almost 200 times the amount it burned in the attempt. A smaller whale lunging at a sparse collection of krill would only get around 8,000 calories, but that’s still 8 times more than what it burned. Even when Goldbogen accounted for the energy needed to dive in search of prey, the whales still regained 3 to 90 times as much energy as they spent.

For comparison, sea otters get around 4 calories for every one they burn, and Weddell seals get around 10. If blue whales happen across a particularly thick glut of prey, their feeding efficiency is about ten times greater than for any other sea-going mammal.

All of these record-breaking numbers are probably a pale shadow of the true efficiency of a hunting whale, because he was being fairly conservative about the krill in his simulations. Photographs of krill suggest that these animals can gather in swarms a hundred (or even a thousand) times greater than those that Goldbogen used. If a whale swam into one of these swarms with mouth agape, it might even recover 1000 times more energy than it spent.

An efficient lifestyle is a big boon to the blue whale. Every year, it migrates from rich feeding areas close to the pole to relatively poorer mating areas towards the equator. If it’s to survive, it needs to feed as effectively as it can during the summer to build up a thick layer of blubbery reserves to fuel it through the harsh food-starved winter.

Reference: Journal of Experimental Biology 

What Is the World's Largest City?

The world's largest city by surface area is Hulunbuir, China, which is more than 100,000 square miles (about 250,000 square km) in area. To put it in perspective, that's bigger than 42 out of 50 American states. This is almost double the size of the next largest city of Jiuquan, also in China. The largest city outside of China is Altamira, Brazil, which is about 60,000 square miles (about 160,000 square km) in area.

More facts on super-sized cities:

The cities with the largest populations are Shanghai, Mumbai, Karachi, Delhi and Istanbul, all of which have populations of about 13 million people.

There are many contenders for the smallest city in the world, but most agree that it's either Hun, Croatia, with a population of 23; or Vatican City, which measures less than a fifth of a square mile (about a third of a square km).

The largest city in the U.S. by area is Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska, which is about 10,000 square miles (about 25,000 square km) in area. It is the eighth-largest city in the world by area. The largest U.S. city by population is New York, which has a population of about 8 million people.

Smoking cigarettes damages 323 different human genes

It's not exactly news that smoking cigarettes is bad for you, but this latest danger is a doozy: smoking damages your genome. The largest genetic study of smoking ever has identified over 300 genes that are negatively affected by cigarettes.

The study looked at white blood cells from over a thousand people in the hopes of isolating specific genes whose expression was altered by smoking cigarettes. It's just one of many studies being undertaken as part of the San Antonio Family Heart Study, which has spent years examining health issues in the Texas city's Mexican American community, but this particular test is probably the most ambitious.


Research leader Jac Charlesworth explains what they found and why it's significant:

'Previous studies of gene expression as influenced by smoking have been seriously limited in size with the largest of the in vivo studies including only 42 smokers and 43 non-smokers. We studied 1,240 individuals, including 297 current smokers. Never before has such a clear link between smoking and transcriptomics [effects on gene expression] been revealed, and the scale at which exposure to cigarette smoke appears to influence the expression levels of our genes is sobering.'



The genetic effects observed fit into a variety of categories that correlate well with the known physical effects of smoking, such as decreased immune response, cell death, increased risk of cancer, metabolism of foreign particles, and natural killer cell signaling. Taken as a whole, the study points out just how deep the damage of smoking goes.


As Charlesworth puts it: 'Our results indicate that not only individual genes but entire networks of gene interaction are influenced by cigarette smoking. It is likely that this observed effect of smoking on transcription has larger implications for human disease risk, especially in relation to the increased risk of a wide variety of cancers throughout the body as a result of cigarette smoke exposure'

Source:Amazing news blog 

Microneedles may make getting flu shots easier

One day your annual flu shot could come in the mail. At least that's the hope of researchers developing a new method of vaccine delivery that people could even use at home: a patch with microneedles.

Microneedles? That's right, tiny little needles so small you don't even feel them. Attached to a patch like a Band-Aid, the little needles barely penetrate the skin before they dissolve and release their vaccine.

Researchers led by Mark Prausnitz of Georgia Institute of Technology reported their research on microneedles in Sunday's edition of Nature Medicine.

The business side of the patch feels like fine sandpaper, he said. In tests of microneedles without vaccine, people rated the discomfort at one-tenth to one-twentieth that of getting a standard injection, he said. Nearly everyone said it was painless.

Some medications are already delivered by patches, such as nicotine patches for people trying to quit smoking. That's simply absorbed through the skin. But attempts to develop patches with the flu vaccine absorbed through the skin have not been successful so far.


In the Georgia Tech work, the vaccine is still injected.
But the needles are so small that they don't hurt and it doesn't take any special training to use this kind of patch.

So two problems are solved right away — fear of needles, and disposal of leftover hypodermic needles.
"The goal has been a means to administer the vaccine that is patient friendly," Mark R. Prausnitz of Georgia Tech said in a telephone interview.

That means "not only not hurting or looking scary, but that patients could self-administer," he said, and people would be more likely to get the flu vaccine.
By developing needles that dissolve, there are no leftover sharp needles, especially important for people who might give themselves the vaccine at home, he said.

The patch, which has been tested on mice, was developed in collaboration by researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University, Prausnitz said. The researchers are now seeking funds to begin tests in people and, if all goes well, the patch could be in use in five years, he said.

Flu vaccination is recommended for nearly everyone, every year, and that's a big burden on the public health network, Prausnitz noted. Many people don't get the shot because it's inconvenient, but if they could get in the mail or at the pharmacy they might do so, he said.

The patch is placed on the skin and left for 5 minutes to 15 minutes, he said. It can remain longer without doing any damage, he said. In tests on mice, the miocroneedles delivered a correct dose of the flu vaccine.
The little needles are 650 microns (three-hundredths of an inch) in length and there are 100 on the patch used in the mouse study.

Asked if the term "microneedle" might still frighten some folks averse to shots, Prausnitz said he was confident that marketers would come up with a better term before any sales began.
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Source :arab news.com 

How Many People in China are Over 65?

By 2015, there will be more than 100 million people in China who are more than 65 years old. By 2050, that population will raise to 300 million. At that time, a full one-fourth of the Chinese population will be older than 65.

More facts on aging populations:

Globally, by 2018, there will be more people older than 65 than those younger than 5. This will be the first time this age discrepancy will have occurred.

Though Japan had one of the youngest populations in the 1950s, the median age now is more than 40 years. By 2050, the median age of the Japanese population will exceed 50 years.
The two areas of the world that are aging the most rapidly are East Asia and Western Europe. Though the United States is still subject to the trend of aging, the immigration of many younger Latin Americans to the U.S. is keeping the population's average age down.

Source:Wise Geek.com 

The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries

1-Abbey Library St. Gall in Saint Gallen, Switzerland

2-The Astronomy Library of the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands

3-Bristol Central Library

4-The British Library reading room at the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum in London, England.

5-Central Library of Vancouver in Vancouver, Canada

6-Delft University Library in The Netherlands

7-José Vasconcelos Library

8-Klementinum National Library in the Czech Republic

9-The Library of Melk Abbey, in Melk, Austria

10-Library of Parliament (reading room), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

11-The Los Angeles Central Library in Los Angeles, California

12-Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (The Austrian National Library) in Vienna, Austria

13-Philology Library of the University Berlin in Russia

14-Royal Library El Escorial in Spain

15-City Library of Stockholm in Sweden

16-The Suzzallo library of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington

Source: The Great Geek Manual .com