| 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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