Archive:Did You Know?

01:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Once, [neutrinos] were thought to have no mass and to travel at the speed of light; today we know that they do have a little mass, though so trifling that no one has yet measured it.

All we know is that if you had some subatomic scales, it would take at least 100,000 neutrinos to balance a single electron.

Even so, their vast numbers make it possible that, in total, they outweigh all the visible matter ofthe universe. —Frank Close

18:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

In many ways music appears to be hardwired in us. Anthropologists have yet to discover a single human culture without its own form of music.

Children don't need any formal training to learn how to sing and dance.

And music existed long before modern civilization . In 2008 archaeologists in Germany discovered the remains of a 35,000•year•old flute.

Music, in other words, is universal, easily learned, and ancient.

That's what you would expect of an instinct that evolved in our distant ancestors. —Carl Zimmer

22:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have linked resveratrol, a chemical compound [a polyphenol] found in red wine, to improved health of patients with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), also known as “pre-diabetes.” read more, page 3.

01:33, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

• Carl Linnaeus's passion for nature was clear from the start. His school chums nicknamed him the "little botanist" because, according to biographer Wilfrid Blunt, he was "always playing truant in the summer months and going off into the countryside to look for plants." The little botanist soon became interested in a career in medicine—a natural path, since doctors at that time were well versed in the pharmaceutical uses of plants. In 1735, at age 28, he obtained a medical degree. Six years later, after practicing in Stockholm, he accepted a position as professor of medicine and botany at the University of Uppsala. —Kathy B. Maher.