|
| |
|
| |
| Today is: Sunday January 28, 2001. |
|
|
|
Trivia: Human |
|
 The number of centenarians - 100
years and older - has more than doubled since 1980 to about 50,000. Four in five were
women.
The body's daily requirement of vitamins and minerals is less than a thimbleful.
Researchers looked at more than 400 non-food choking deaths in children over a 20-year
period, and found that most were caused by balloons (29 percent) and balls and marbles (19
percent). More older children died from balloons than did toddlers.
It takes 27 minutes of gardening to burn 100 calories.
The body's largest internal organ is the small intestine at an average length of 15 to 20
feet and has a diameter of no more than an inch and a half. The large intestine measures
an average of 5 feet.
Scientists estimate that there are 3 to 4 million genes in each human cell, and yet they
have been able to identify one particular gene among those millions, produce and image of
that gene, and examine it for abnormalities.
It takes the human eyes an hour to adapt completely to seeing in the dark. Once adapted,
however, the eyes are about 100,000 times more sensitive to light than they are in bright
sunlight.
Scientists estimate that they could fill a 1,000-volume encyclopedia with the coded
instructions in the DNA of a single human cell if the instructions could be translated to
English.
It was discovered that the lymph nodes filter out foreign chemicals, particles, and
microorganisms before they enter the bloodstream when an autopsy was performed on a
heavily tattooed sailor; his lymph nodes had traces of ink in them.
Just sitting and doing nothing, the average person burns 1,700 calories of energy, or
7,000 kilojoules.
We think we cannot see at night. But given enough time to adjust, the human eye can, for a
time, see almost as well as an owl's. Ultimately, as the amount of light decreases, an owl
detects shapes after a human no longer can.
Well-conditioned athletes commonly have low resting pulse rates in the range of 40 to 50
beats per minute. This compares with 70 to 80 beats per minute in the average adult.
The older a person gets the less sleep he/she requires. A child should get from 8 to 10
hours a night. An elderly adult can do well with 4 to 6 hours.
When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense to go. The first sense lost is
usually sight. Then follows taste, smell, and touch.
The oldest way to lose weight is fasting - the ultimate diet.
The bones in the human body are comprised of 22 percent water.
When astronauts remain weightless in space for prolonged periods, scientists have
discovered their bones lose a measurable amount of weight and thickness. This means that
weightlessness actually cause human beings to shrink.
The only part of the human body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It
takes in oxygen directly from the air.
The brain is not sensitive to pain. Headache pain originates in the nerves, muscles, and
tissues surrounding the skull, not from the brain.
Scientists have estimated that speech involves at least 100 muscles. In normal speaking,
we make about 14 sounds per second. Therefore, when speaking, we generate 140,000
neuromuscular events per second.
When people are relaxed, they inhale about 12 times every minute.
The only part of the human body that has no blood supply is the cornea. It takes its
oxygen directly from the air.
The brain is surrounded by a membrane containing veins and arteries. This membrane is
filled with nerves of feeling. However, the brain itself has no feeling; if it is cut
into, the person feels no pain.
Scientists have found chocolate has a chemical that helps counteract depression.
When the female embryo is only six weeks old, it makes preparations for her motherhood by
developing egg cells for future offspring. (When the baby girl is born, each of her
ovaries carries about a million egg cells, all that she will ever have).
The outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, is responsible for receiving messages from
all the senses and for giving the body all its commands to move.
The brain is told which way the head is moving, and how fast the motion is, by the degree
and direction the ear's canal hairs bend.
Scientists have found that the skin of the armpits can harbor up to 516,000 bacteria per
square inch, while drier areas, such as the forearm, have only about 13,000 bacteria per
square inch.
When we smile broadly, we use seventeen muscles.
The palms of the hands and soles of the feet contain more sweat glands than any other part
of the body.
The brain of Neanderthal man was larger than that of modern man.
Scientists say that people who sleep less than average (less than 6 hours a night) are
more organized and efficient than everybody else.
When you have a black eye, you have a bilateral periorbital hematoma.
The pituitary gland - responsible for producing the hormone that regulates growth - is
only the size of a pea, and it weighs little more than a small paper clip.
The brain reaches its maximum weight at age 20: about 3 pounds. Over the next 60 years, as
billions of nerve cells die within the brain, it loses about 3 ounces. The brain begins to
lose cells at a rate of 50,000 per day by the age of 30.
Seeing another person yawn makes it likely that you will yawn yourself. Thinking about,
even reading about yawning can set you off. People with mental disorders such as psychoses
rarely yawn.
While 7 men in 100 have some form of colorblindness, only 1 woman in 1,000 suffers from
it. The most common form of color blindness is a red-green deficiency.
The psychology Department of Dayton University reports that loud talk can be ten times
more distracting than the sound of a jackhammer. Loud, incessant chatter can make a
listener nervous and irritable, and even start him on the road to insanity.
The bubonic plague was called the "Black Death" because of the black spots that
appeared on the bodies of its victims. Plague victims also developed swellings and began
coughing up blood.
Semantic memories are memories of facts like phone numbers, words, or dates. These are
stored in the temporal lobe of the brain.
While calcium is important to strengthen bone, 99 percent of the body's calcium is
contained in teeth.
The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something
pleasing.
The cardiovascular system's circulation of blood supplies the cells with oxygen and food.
Senior citizens are at greater risk for dehydration than younger people because their
bodies are less effective at letting them know when they need water.
The rapid, irregular eye movement that occurs when changing focus from one point to
another, as while reading or looking out from a moving train, is called saccade.
The characteristic red nose caused by broken capillaries, often caused by a person's
excessive drinking over a prolonged period, is called rhinophyma, or grog blossom.
Seventy-two muscles are required to speak one word.
The colon absorbs 3 pints (1.3 liters) of water every day from food waste.
Sight accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all sensory perceptions.
Sixty thousand miles of vessels carry blood to every part of your body.
"Mageiricophobia" is the intense fear of having to cook.
"The bends" is a painful condition caused when nitrogen gas forms bubbles in a
diver's blood. Scuba divers risk getting "the bends" if they come up too fast
from a deep dive.
"The bends" is a painful condition caused when nitrogen gas forms bubbles in a
diver's blood. Scuba divers risk getting the bends if they come up too fast from a deep
dive.
"Villi," finger-like projections on the small intestine (their purpose is to
increase the surface area for water and nutrient absorption) are four-hundredths of an
inch long.
The sense of touch: Electrical impulses travel from the skin toward the spinal cord at a
rate of up to 425 feet per second.
A "nullipara" is a woman who has never borne a child.
A 3-week-old embryo is no larger than a sesame seed. A 1-month-old fetus's body is no
heavier than an envelope and a sheet of paper. Its hand is no larger than a teardrop.
A baby's head is about one-quarter of its total height. By the age of 15 years, the head
makes up about one-eighth of total height.
While examining urine, German chemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus.
A bird's eye takes up about 50 percent of its head; our eyes take up about 5 percent of
our head. To be comparable to a bird's eyes, the eyes of a human being would have to be
the size of baseballs.
While reading a page of print, the eyes do not move continually across the page. They move
in a series of jumps, called "fixations," from one clump of words to the next.
The richer the food you eat is, the longer it takes to leave the stomach.
A bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EEG machine, exhibited movement which is
virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult man or woman.
Whispering is more wearing on your voice than a normal speaking tone.
Whispering and shouting stretch the vocal cords. |
| |
|
