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Fact File


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

 
 


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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