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In the Fact File section we bring you a new collection of quick facts each week. (Click on the links below for more facts)

 
 

3381/ The Greenland Ice Cap, known as the Inlandis, is the largest ice mass in the northern hemisphere. Covering 1.8 million square kilometres - 90 percent of Green;and's area - it is nearly nine times the size of the UK.

3382/ The Greenland Ice cap has an average thickness of about 2000 metres and is estimated to weigh more than 30 billion tons. If al this ice were to melt, world sea levels would rise by seven metres.

3383/ The bottom layers of the ice in ice caps could be up to two million years old.

3384/ Amazingly their are mites only a fraction of a millimetre across - microscopic tardigrades - that are able to survive in these extreme ice conditions. They are able to dehydrate themselves and, once frozen, hibernate for thousands of years. When the temperatures become more clement they come back to life. In laboratory conditions, these resilient mites have been frozen at absolute zero (-273C) and returned to life when thawed.

3385/ Men who are moderately aggressive are likely to have stronger immune systems than their more passive counterparts, according to scientists in the US. Researchers related levels of aggression in 4,415 Vietnam veterans to the subjects health and white blood cel count. Douglas Granger, of Pennsylvania University, explains: "Men who had been in occasional fights or brushes with the law had more white blood cells - the major players in the body's immune system - than those who were rarely aggressive".

3386/ Chocolate could one day help prevent tooth decay. Japanese researchers have found that antibacterial agents in cocoa bean husk (usually discarded) can protect the teeth of laboratory rats.

3387/ More than 1000 species of plant, in 17 different families are touch sensitive. They almost certainly inherited this response from bacteria, the ancestors of all plant life, which can react to stimuli by producing tiny electrical signals.

3388/ Perhaps the most impressive example of a 'quick' reaction can be seen in the Mimosa pudica, which is to be found in the raindorest of Borneo and is known locally as the 'sensitive plant'. If you touch the leaves it will shrink away from you within seconds.

3389/ The cause of the movement in the sensitive plant, according to experiments in American Universities in the 1960s, is a rapid influx of calcium into its cells.

3390/ Janet Braam and Ronald Davis at Stanford University in the US, have shown that just spraying plants with water can stunt their growth by up to a third, as the plants sense they are being touched and devote more energy to making a strong stem.

3391/ Maize plants that are shaken for 30 seconds every day to simulate the wind, yield up to 40 per cent less than maize plants that do not feel a breeze.

3392/ Michael J Kasperbauer, a plant physiologist with the US Department of Agriculture, has spent more than 30 years studying how plants sense light. He has found that plants that grow surrounded by red sheeting 'sensed' the increased 'far red' light and grew more quickly than plants surrounded by black sheeting. This led to yields increasing 20 to 50 per cent.

3393/ Turnips grown using orange sheeting are much larger than those grown with black or clear plastic covers.

3394/ Which colour sheeting a turnip is grown under also affects its flavour. George Antonius, of Kentucky State University, started a series of 'blind tests' with turnips grown through blue, white and green sheeting. All but one of the 25 testers described turnips grown through blue sheeting as 'sharp'; white sheeting produced a bland tasting turnip; and green led to a 'mild' and 'almost sweet' vegetable.

3395/ Professor Mordecai Jaffe has doubled the rate of growth of dwarf pea plants by bombarding them with a warble at 70 to 80 decibels - slightly louder than the sound of the average human voice. You do however need to talk to them for days! (Or play them music!)

3396/ Seed germination is also greatly increased by the same technique, with germination rates in radish seeds increasing from an average of 20 per cent to 80 to 90 per cent.

3397/ When lima beans are attcked they by spider mites, they release a cocktail of chemicals, including methyl salicylate, which attracts predatory mites that then arrive and feast on the spider mites.

3398/ Several scientists have proved that when one tree is damaged by pests, those close to it suffer less. They believe the first tree 'warns' its neighbours to develop protection by emitting smells that pests dislike.

3399/ In field trials in Georgia, scientists discovered that Cardiolchiles nigriceps wasps received special signals from plants under attack by tobacco budworms, which the wasps love. The wasps flew straight to those plants and ignored others being chewed by different pests.

3400/ The best time to spray many weeds is late summer, just before the weather turns cooler. The weeds will absorb the chemical during the day and then when the plant senses a drop in temperature, it will draw the chemical down into its roots along with nutrients to store for the cold winter. The chemicals then kill the roots and the weed has no chance of reappearing the following year.

 

 

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