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1701/ It typically takes
twelve years and close to $1 billion dollars to develop a
new medicine.
1702/ The Boomtown Rats,
whose lead singer was Bob Geldof, biggest hit was inspired
by a female random killer whose excuse was 'I don't like mondays'.
1703/ In 1935 Jesse Owens
broke 4 world records in 45 minutes.
1704/ In 1963, as part
of a National Cancer Institute Program to screen plant species
for anticancer activity, the US Forest Service collected Pacific
Yew tree bark and shipped it to the NCI for study. It was
subsequently discovered that an extract (taxol) of the bark
has antitumour activity.
1705/ Cystallite is the
material snooker balls are made from.
1706/ Duplication in
the human genopme is more extensive then it is in other primates.
About 5% of the human genome consists of copies longer than
1,000 bases.
1707/ Some duplications
cause disease. A type of Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, for
example, arises from a duplication of 1.5 million bases in
a gene on chromosome 17. The disease causes numb hands and
feet.
1708/ The genome of flowering
plants doubled twice, an estimated 180 and 112 million years
ago, and rice did it again 45 million years ago.
1709/ In February 2001
it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000
genes as originally expected, but only 30,000.
1710/ Allied bombers
were issued with Biro pens as fountain pens leaked at high
altitude.
1711/ A study of more
than half a million children in Denmark has concluded that
the triple vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and
rubella (mmr) does not cause autism. The team found no difference
in the rate of autism between the 440,655 children who were
vaccinated and the rest, who weren't - about 3 per 1000 children
in both groups.
1712/ Two of the greatest
writers who ever lived, William Shakespeare and Miguel de
Cervantes (who wrote Don Quixote), both died on 23rd April
1616.
1713/ In 2000, the last
year for available statistics, the pharmaceutical industry
in the US employed 57,488 technicians and scientists, 339
more than in 1999. Nevertheless, the industry has lost jobs,
mainly among clinical researchers, whose numbers fell from
14,402 in 1999 to 11,999 in 2000.
1714/ Research and development
investment by pharmaceutical companies has gone from $2 billion
(US) a year in 1980 to $30.3 billion in 2001; and is expected
to have increased by another $3 to $4 billion in 2002 when
figures are finally released.
1715/ Until 1936 in New
York, it was against the law to wear topless bathing suits,
for women and men.
1716/ One study has found
that children whose mothers were treated with anti-epilepsy
drugs designed to calm brain activity were more likely to
have developmental problems and lower IQ.
1717/ A double-blind
study at a young offenders institution in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
found that the group of prisoners who had been given vitamin
and mineral supplements committed 37 per cent fewer serious
or violent offences than the placebo group. After the trial
had finished levels of violence quickly returned to normal.
1718/ Simply making a
basic memory chip and running it for the typical lifespan
of a computer eats up 800 times the chip's own weight in fossil
fuel.
1719/ The 180m sprint
of the 776 BC Olympics (the earliest recorded) was won by
Coroebus.
1720/ An estimated 10
million to 30 million Americans were given a polio vaccine
between 1955 and 1963 which was contaminated with the simian
virus SV40, according to an Institute of Medicine report issued
22nd Oct 2002.
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