KNOWLEDGE TO GAIN

With just their input cables, human neurons can perform difficult logic calculations previously only seen in entire neural networks. To restate: human neurons are far more powerful devices than originally thought. And if deep learning algorithms—the AI method loosely based on the brain that's taken our world by storm—take note, they can be too. Those are unconventional, fighting words. For 70 years, neurons were considered the basic computational unit of the brain. Yet according to  a new study  published this month in  Science , the neurons in our cortex, the outermost "crust" of our brain, seem to have uniquely evolved to sustain incredibly complex computations in their input cables. It's as if someone finally obtained proof that your computer's electrical wiring is actually made up of mini-processors, each performing calculations before sending results to a CPU. It's weird. It's controversial. But it has also just been seen for the first time in human n...

Scientists from Google and the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have published the largest  high-resolution map  of brain connectivity in any animal, sharing a 3D model that traces 20 million synapses connecting some 25,000 neurons in the brain of a fruit fly.The model is a milestone in the field of connectomics, which uses  detailed imaging techniques  to map the physical pathways of the brain. This map, known as a "connectome," covers roughly one-third of the fruit fly's brain. To date, only a single organism, the roundworm  C. elegans , has had its brain  completely mapped  in this way. Connectomics has a  mixed reputation  in the science world. Advocates argue that it helps link physical parts of the brain to specific behaviors, which is a key goal in neuroscience. But  critics  note it has yet to produce any major breakthroughs, and they say that the painstaking work of mapping neurons is a drain on resources that might be better put to use elsewhere. "The re...

Did You Know? Forgetting is good for the brain: deleting unnecessary information helps the nervous system retain its plasticity. In order to function properly, the human brain requires the ability not only to store but also to forget: Through memory loss, unnecessary information is deleted and the nervous system retains its plasticity. A disruption of this process can lead to serious mental disorders. Basel scientists have now discovered a molecular mechanism that actively regulates the process of forgetting.

Did You Know? On average you blink 28,000 times a day. And blinking provides mental rest, new research suggests. Scientists have shown that the average person blinks 15-20 times per minute. That's up to 1,200 times per hour and a whopping 28,800 times in a day—much more often than we need to keep our eyeballs lubricated. In fact, we spend about 10 percent of our waking hours with our eyes closed. So why do we blink so much? New research from Japan's Osaka University found that blinking may serve as a form of momentary rest for the brain, giving the mind a chance to wander and "go offline." These brief breaks may last just a split second, or even a few seconds. When our brains aren't concentrated on a task, brain regions known as the "default mode network" come alive, allowing our mind to switch into an idle mode—a phenomenon researchers discovered decades ago. But how does blinking affect this idle state? According to the new research, blinking and the b...

Did You Know? Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen make up 90% of the human body. Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% is composed of another five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All 11 are necessary for life. The remaining elements are trace elements, of which more than a dozen are thought on the basis of good evidence to be necessary for life. All of the mass of the trace elements put together (less than 10 grams for a human body) do not add up to the body mass of magnesium, the least common of the 11 non-trace elements. Not all elements which are found in the human body in trace quantities play a role in life. Some of these elements are thought to be simple common contaminants without function (examples: caesium, titanium), while many others are thought to be active toxins, depending on amount (cadmium, mercury, lead, radioactives). In humans,...

Did You Know? French fries are originally from Belgium. Despite its name, the French fry is not French. The origins of the French fry have been traced back to Belgium, where historians claim potatoes were being fried in the late-1600s. According to local Belgian lore, poor villagers living in Meuse Valley often ate small fried fish they caught in the river.

Did You Know? The smell of chocolate increases theta brain waves, which triggers relaxation. Eating a bar of chocolate may cheer you up, but sniffing it calms you down, says a British psychologist. Among several food smells tested, only chocolate had a significant calming effect on the brain—and only real chocolate at that. Neil Martin, a psychologist at Middlesex University in Enfield, asked 60 volunteers to sit in a "low-odour room", wearing goggles and headphones to block out other stimuli, while he wafted smells their way. He used EEG (electroencephalography) to record their brain waves as they sniffed. Half the volunteers were treated to the odours of real foods, while the others made do with synthetic smells. The real foods included chocolate and coffee, as well as the less aromatic baked beans and rotting pork. But apart from chocolate, the smells had little effect on the subjects' "theta" brain wave, which is associated with attentiveness. Only chocolate...

Did You Know? The cloned dogs, six Canadian Labradors, started to work for South Korea's customs service as sniffers in 2009. They were quite a lot successful compared to their counterparts. South Korean customs authorities say they have successfully turned a group of cloned Labrador retrievers into world-class sniffer dogs. To create the ideal customs dogs, a team of Seoul National University scientists, led by researcher Lee Byung-Chun, cloned a successful Canadian sniffer dog in 2007. Lee was a former colleague of Hwang Woo-Suk, the scientist who was disgraced when his claims about his work with human stem cells were proved false. But Lee severed ties with Hwang in 2006, according to the Agence France-Presse. Seven cloned puppies were born, and six completed the 16-month training program to become sniffer dogs.(The seventh had to drop out of the training program due to injury.) Three of the six Labradors that completed the training program have now reported for duty at South Kor...

Did You Know? In the middle ages, people believed that sperm coming from the left testicle produced girls. Men who wanted sons had it removed sometimes. As early as 330 BC, Aristotle prescribed the ligation (tying off) of the left testicle in men wishing to have boys. In the Middle Ages, men who wanted a boy sometimes had their left testicle removed. This was because people believed that the right testicle made "boy" sperm and the left made "girl" sperm.

Did You Know? Knowledge is growing so fast that ninety percent of what we will know in fifty years time, will be discovered in those fifty years. A full 90% of all the data in the world has been generated over the last two years. The internet companies are awash with data that can be grouped and utilised. Is this a good thing? An increasing amount of data is becoming available on the internet. Each and every one of us is constantly producing and releasing data about ourselves. We do this either by moving around passively -- our behaviour being registered by cameras or card usage -- or by logging onto our PCs and surfing the net. The volumes of data make up what has been designated 'Big Data' -- where data about individuals, groups and periods of time are combined into bigger groups or longer periods of time. Petter Bae Brandtzæg of SINTEF ICT points to the huge research centres now developed at internet companies such as Facebook and Google. 'The advantage they have is the ...

Did You Know? Dolphins hear tones with a frequency up to 160 kHz with the greatest sensitivity. Dolphins have a well-developed, acute sense of hearing. The auditory cortex of their brain is highly developed. The dolphin's auditory nerve is about twice the diameter of the human eighth nerve (connecting the inner ear to the brainstem) leading to more rapid sound processing for dolphins. In addition, a dolphin's auditory nerve supply is about three times that of humans — possibly providing more ultrasonic information to a dolphin's central nervous system for echolocation. Bottlenose dolphins hear tones with a frequency up to 160 kHz with the greatest sensitivity ranging from 40 to 100 kHz. The average hearing range for humans is about 0.02 to 20 kHz. In other studies, the hearing range for the bottlenose dolphin has been measured in 75 to 150,000 Hz (0.075 to 150 kHz). A dolphin's small external ear openings don't seem to be important in conducting sound. They lead to ...

Did You Know? Armadillos have 4 babies at a time and are all the same sex. The nine-banded armadillo always gives birth to 4 identical quadruplets. They are produced from a single egg which splits in four, meaning the babies will all be the same gender. Armadillos are able to delay implantation of the fertilised egg at times of stress; it is thought this can be delayed for as long as 2 years! Baby armadillos have soft leathery skin which hardens after a few weeks. Where armadillos live is dependent on soil type, they prefer sandy or loam soils which are loose and porous, making it easier to dig for food and make burrows.

Did You Know? In South Korea, there is a Cat Cafe where you can go to drink coffee and hang out with cats for hours. Cat cafes first gained popularity in Japan (although according to Wikipedia the first was opened in Taiwan in 1998) and then spread across Asia. They are now starting to spring up in Europe and other places. These are essentially normal coffee or tea shops, with the exception that they contain a number of cats (typically 10 to 30) that patrons are allowed to pet and play with during their stay. So the price of your latte generally includes as much cat watching and loving as you wish, although in some cafes you have to pay by the hour. The intended purpose of these cafes is to let people who are not allowed to have cats or dogs in their apartments, dorms, or homes come spend some quality time with some furry critters while sipping some coffee. It is also great for cat-loving travelers who need a good kitty fix in Asia. We ventured out to find a cat cafe on our very first ...

Did You Know? You use about 100 different muscles while speaking. To create speech, around a hundred different muscles in the chest, neck, jaw, tongue, and lips must work together. Every word or short phrase that is physically spoken is followed by its own unique arrangement of muscle movements. The information necessary for producing a phrase is saved in the speech area of the brain.   The tone present in the voice of the speaker shows many different possible things, one of such example being the current emotional state, and is changed in regards to the rapidity of the muscle movement. Humans can output around fourteen sounds per second, while particular components of the speech process, such as those in the tongue, lips, and jaw cannot create more than two actions per second.   The facial muscles play possibly the most important role in the articulation of speech and the transmission of emotions through it. The frontalis muscle is in the forehead and is only used for facial expressio...

Did You Know? A Japanese man (Tsutomu Yamaguchi) survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during WW2. Some 260,000 people survived the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, but Japanese engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of the very few who endured the horror of both blasts and lived to the tell the tale. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was preparing to leave Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell. The 29-year-old naval engineer was on a three-month-long business trip for his employer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and August 6, 1945, was supposed to be his last day in the city. He and his colleagues had spent the summer working long hours on the design for a new oil tanker, and he was looking forward to finally returning home to his wife, Hisako, and their infant son, Katsutoshi. Around 8:15 that morning, Yamaguchi was walking to Mitsubishi's shipyard a final time when he heard the drone of an aircraft overhead. Looking skyward, he saw an American B-29 b...

Did You Know? Eating fruits and vegetables may help the human body make its own aspirin. Salicylic acid, the key component that gives aspirin its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties, may be something humans can produce on their own, a new study suggests. Salicylic acid (SA) previously had been found in the blood of people who had not taken aspirin recently -- especially vegetarians. This made sense because salicylic acid is a natural substance found in fruits and vegetables. However, researchers in the United Kingdom who gave study participants benzoic acid, another natural substance in fruits and vegetables that the human body could use to produce salicylic acid, concluded that people can make their own SA based on the subsequent changes in the participants' SA levels.

Did You Know? Alcohol doesn't make you forget anything. When you get blackout drunk, the brain temporarily loses the ability to create memories. Alcohol primarily interferes with the ability to form new long–term memories, leaving intact previously established long–term memories and the ability to keep new information active in memory for brief periods. As the amount of alcohol consumed increases, so does the magnitude of the memory impairments. Large amounts of alcohol, particularly if consumed rapidly, can produce partial (i.e., fragmentary) or complete (i.e., en bloc) blackouts, which are periods of memory loss for events that transpired while a person was drinking. Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers—including college drinkers—than was previously assumed, and have been found to encompass events ranging from conversations to intercourse. Mechanisms underlying alcohol–induced memory impairments include disruption of activity in the hippocampus, a brain region tha...

Did You Know? The Nazis tried to teach dogs to talk and read. The Germans viewed canines as being almost as intelligent as humans and attempted to build an army of fearsome 'speaking' dogs, extraordinary new research shows. Hitler hoped the clever creatures would learn to communicate with their SS masters - and he even had a special dog school set up to teach them to talk. The incredible findings show Nazi officials recruited so-called educated dogs from all over Germany and trained them to speak and tap out signals using their paws. One mutt was said to have uttered the words 'Mein Fuhrer' when asked who Adolf Hitler was. Another 'spoke' by tapping letters of the alphabet with his paws and was said to have speculated about religion and learnt poetry. The Germans hoped to use the animals for the war effort, such as getting them to work alongside the SS and guard concentration camps to free up officers. The bizarre 'Wooffan SS' experiment has come to ligh...

Did You Know? WW2 Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade survived a fall from 18,000 feet (5,500 m) without a parachute, suffering only a sprained leg. On the night of 24 March 1944, 21-year-old Alkemade was one of seven crew members in Avro Lancaster B Mk. II, DS664, of No. 115 Squadron RAF. Returning from a 300 bomber raid on Berlin, east of Schmallenberg, DS664 was attacked by a German Ju 88 night-fighter, caught fire and began to spiral out of control. Because his parachute had gone up in flames and thus was unserviceable, Alkemade jumped from the aircraft without it, preferring to die by impact rather than burn to death. He fell 18,000 feet (5,500 m) to the ground below. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground. He was able to move his arms and legs and suffered only a sprained leg. The Lancaster crashed in flames, killing pilot Jack Newman and three other members of the crew. They are buried in the CWGC's Hanover War Cemetery. Alkemade was subsequently...

Did You Know? The core of a neutron star is very dense. It is so dense that if you take a spoonful of matter from its core, it would weigh 5500 billion kg. A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 milliliters) of its material would have a mass over 5500 billion kg, about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. In the enormous gravitational field of a neutron star, that teaspoon of material would weigh15 times what the Moon would weigh if it were placed on the surface of the Earth. The entire mass of the Earth at neutron star density would fit into a sphere of 305m in diameter.

Did You Know? Around 80% of the universe is missing in the form of dark matter and dark energy. Roughly 80% of the mass of the universe is made up of material that scientists cannot directly observe. Known as dark matter, this bizarre ingredient does not emit light or energy. So why do scientists think it dominates? Since at least the 1920s, astronomers have hypothesized that the universe contains more matter than seen by the naked eye. Support for dark matter has grown since then, and although no solid direct evidence of dark matter has been detected, there have been strong possibilities in recent years. "Motions of the stars tell you how much matter there is," Pieter van Dokkum, a researcher at Yale University, said in a statement. "They don't care what form the matter is, they just tell you that it's there." Van Dokkum led a team that identified the galaxy Dragonfly 44, which is composed almost entirely of dark matter. The familiar material of the univers...

Did You Know? 92% of all newly sold cars in Brazil use ethanol as fuel, which is produced from sugar cane. Brazil is the world's second largest producer of ethanol fuel. Brazil and the United States have led the industrial production of ethanol fuel for several years, together accounting for 85 percent of the world's production in 2017. Brazil produced 26.72 billion liters (7.06 billion U.S. liquid gallons), representing 26.1 percent of the world's total ethanol used as fuel in 2017. Between 2006-2008, Brazil was considered to have the world's first "sustainable" biofuels economy and the biofuel industry leader, a policy model for other countries; and its sugarcane ethanol "the most successful alternative fuel to date." However, some authors consider that the successful Brazilian ethanol model is sustainable only in Brazil due to its advanced agri-industrial technology and its enormous amount of arable land available; while according to other authors...

Did You Know? Paper bills were first used by the Chinese, who started carrying folding money during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907). Paper bills were first used by the Chinese, who started carrying folding money during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) — mostly in the form of privately issued bills of credit or exchange notes — and used it for more than 500 years before the practice began to catch on in Europe in the 17th century. While it took another century or two for paper money to spread to the rest of the world, China was already going through a fairly advanced financial crisis: the production of paper notes had grown until their value plummeted, prompting inflation to soar. As a result, China eliminated paper money entirely in 1455 and wouldn't adopt it again for several hundred years. Another not-so-well-known fact: the word cash was originally used to describe the type of round bronze coins with square holes commonly used in the Tang Dynasty, called kai-yuans.

Did You Know? John Shepherd-Barron devised what is hailed as the world's first automatic teller machine. The first model was built and installed in London in 1967. It might just be the best idea to come to a man in the bathtub since Archimedes' time. While taking a soak, inventor John Shepherd-Barron devised what is hailed as the world's first automatic teller machine, although his claim to the title is a matter of dispute. He pitched the device to the British bank Barclays. It accepted immediately, and the first model was built and installed in London in 1967. Though the machine used PIN (personal identification number) codes, a concept Shepherd-Barron also claims to have invented, it was dependent on checks impregnated with the (slightly) radioactive isotope carbon 14 to initiate a withdrawal, as the magnetic coding for ATM cards had not yet been developed. One other difference from its ubiquitous modern counterpart: it didn't charge a fee. https://ultimatefact.viyate...

Did You Know? The first sailing boats were built in Egypt. The first ships were built with papyrus reeds and were propelled by rowers using oars. As time passed, sails appeared and wood replaced papyrus. The wooden boats were modeled after the papyrus boats: they had flat bottoms, no keels, and square sterns.

Did You Know? The Battle of the Bulge is the largest and deadliest battle for U.S. troops to date, with more than 80,000 American deaths. The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II, and took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg, towards the end of the war in Europe. The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy four Allied armies and force the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers' favor.

Did You Know? It's not true that babies are born with the ability to swim. Newborn babies can't swim – they have to learn, just like they learn to walk. But most babies do enjoy being in water and their reflexes mean they will be able to do primitive swimming strokes. You don't have to wait until your baby is immunised to take them swimming. Babies can go into water from birth. However, they can't regulate their temperature like adults, so it's very important to make sure they don't get too cold. Babies can also pick up an infection from water. Therefore, it's generally best to wait until your baby is around 2 months old before you take them swimming. Baby swimming lessons usually start at around 6 months. If your baby is younger than 6 months, make sure the pool is heated to about 32° C. A large public pool would be too cold for a baby under 6 months.

Did You Know? An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. Ostriches are large, non-flying birds that live in Africa. Besides in their natural environment, ostriches are often breed as farm animals because some people like to eat their meat, eggs or to wear fashion products made of their skin. Although they are killed for commercial purposes, they are not endangered. There are around 2 million ostriches that can be found around the globe. Males, females and young ostriches have different colors. Males can be recognized by black and white color. Females and youngs are usually grayish, brownish and white. Ostriches can survive without water a long period of time. They absorb water from the food they eat. They like to eat locusts and small animals such as lizards. Ostriches are the fastest running bird. They can run faster than lions or leopards. Unlike other birds, ostriches have only two toes. They have very strong legs. One kick can kill a lion. Ostrich has the biggest eyes in the wh...

Did You Know? A newborn baby's head accounts for about 25% of his/her entire weight. At birth the circumference of the head is about 13–14 inches. It increases by 17% during the first 3 months of life, and by 25% at 6 months of age.

Did You Know? At the center of our galaxy, The Milky Way, lies a black hole called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short. If you look up on a dark, clear night, away from city lights, you may see a wide band of faint light stretching above you, stiller than a cloud and glittering with densely packed stars. Translated from the Ancient Greek as "Milky Way" for resembling spilled milk on the sky, that band of light is the center of our galaxy. At its center, surrounded by 200-400 billion stars and undetectable to the human eye and by direct measurements, lies a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short. The Milky Way has the shape of a spiral and rotates around its center, with long curling arms surrounding a slightly bulging disk. It's on one of these arms close to the center that the sun and Earth are located. Scientists estimate that the galactic center and Sgr A* are around 25,000 to 28,000 light-years away from us. The entire galaxy is around 100,...

Did You Know? Just 20-30 seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon. Time was running out. The Apollo 11 lunar module was on its historic descent to the moon's crater-pocked surface on 20 July 1969 when a fuel light blinked on. Still 100ft (30 metres) above the ground, it was not what the astronauts needed. The Eagle's tank was nearly dry. Buzz Aldrin, the mission's lunar module pilot, describes how he held his tongue when the warning light appeared and Charlie Duke, Nasa's capsule communicator, came on the line from Houston to inform Aldrin and Neil Armstrong they had only 60 seconds left to make it down. "OK. One hundred feet. Sixty seconds. We'd better ease down," Aldrin recalls thinking. But he thought better of telling Armstrong to get a move on. Dressed in a jacket and "Destination Mars" T-shirt, his fingers adazzle with rings, Aldrin's contorted face conveys how dicey the moment was. "But I...

Did You Know? Contrary to popular belief, there are no wild tigers in Africa. Only in Asia. Tigers as we know them, you see, have never lived in the wild in Africa. But there's still a chance you could see one there. Many wildlife researchers believe that, historically, tigers inhabited much of Asia, and that various tiger subspecies naturally migrated and spread out over time.

Did You Know? The world's largest single banknote is the 100,000-peso note created by the government of the Philippines in 1998. Measuring in at roughly the size of a sheet of legal paper, the world's largest single banknote is the 100,000-peso note created by the government of the Philippines in 1998. Designed to celebrate a century of independence from Spanish rule, the note was offered only to collectors, who could purchase one of the limited-edition notes for 180,000 pesos, or about $3,700 .

Did You Know? Between 2000 and 2015, the average global life expectancy increased by 5 years. Dramatic gains in life expectancy have been made globally since 2000, but major inequalities persist within and among countries, according to this year's "World Health Statistics: Monitoring Health for the SDGs". Life expectancy increased by 5 years between 2000 and 2015, the fastest increase since the 1960s. Those gains reverse declines during the 1990s, when life expectancy fell in Africa because of the AIDS epidemic and in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The increase was greatest in the African Region of WHO where life expectancy increased by 9.4 years to 60 years, driven mainly by improvements in child survival, progress in malaria control and expanded access to antiretrovirals for treatment of HIV. "The world has made great strides in reducing the needless suffering and premature deaths that arise from preventable and treatable diseases,"...

Did You Know? If your DNA was stretched out it would reach to the moon 1500 times. The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average.   You have about 10 trillion cells in your body, so if you stretched the DNA in all the cells out, end to end, they'd stretch over 744 million miles. The moon is only about 250,000 miles away, so all your DNA would stretch to the moon and back almost 1500 times. The sun is 93,000,000 miles away, so your DNA would reach there and back about 4 times!   Interestingly, no more than 1.5 percent of the human genome contains DNA that helps "build" us, that "maps for proteins" as it's called. The other 98.5 percent is junk accumulated through the evolutionary process. For example, 90 percent of yeast genes have counterparts in humans, and there are 2...