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3461/ One US study has shown
that centenarians managed stress better than their contemporaries
who died earlier.
3462/ Dementia is not inevitable
as you age. An American study of centenarians (those who reach
the age of 100) found that 30 per cent of them worldwide reach
the age of 100 cognitively intact. Unfortunately, that does
mean that if you reach the age of 100 there is a 7 in 10 chance
that you will suffer from dementia.
3463/ Until relatively recently
it was assumed that the brain was fully mature at 12 years
old, with most of the crucial wiring completed when we are
as young as three. Scans however by neuroscientists in Belmont,
Massachusetts, have revealed that a teenager's brain is actually
closer to a child's than that of an adult. They found that
the part of the brain responsible for self-control, judgement
and emotional regulation is one of the last parts to mature,
while the limbic system (which is responsible for emotions
such as anger) goes into overload during the teenage years.
All this neurological re-wiring coincides with the emergence
of the sex hormones, making it a particularly complicated
time for adolescents.
3464/ It is then only by our
early twenties that the brain's adult hardware is comfortably
in place. The next change appears to be more gradual but has
been noted by both psychologists and neurologists as shifts
in thinking which occur in a person's forties and fifties.
3465/ Alzheimer's disease is
the most common form of dementia. A sufferer experiences increasing
impairment of memory, thinking, reasoning and language. Personality
change may also occur.
3466/ Researchers have discovered
that specific regions of the brain associated with memory
begin to shrink in size at the earliest stages of Alzheimer's.
3467/ Men taking vitamins C and
E are less likely to suffer from vascular dementia (associated
with strokes) - the second most common form of senility.
3468/ A 1999 survey in Student
BMJ revealed that sixty-two percent of men and 30 per cent
of women between 80 and 102 are sexually active.
3469/ Harvard Medical School
found that women who lived to 100 were four times more likely
to have had children in their forties than those who had survived
only to 73.
3470/ Scientists in Italy have
reported that they have found the gene responsible for ageing.
Pier Guiseppe and his team at the Milan Institute of Experimental
Oncology managed to prolong the life of rodents by 30 per
cent with no bad side effects. They achieved this by removing
the gene for a protein called P66 which triggers apoptosis
(cell death). This gene regulates the reaction to oxidation
agents such as UV rays and is found in all living organisms.
The team says that the extra lifespan is passed to future
generations. It is not clear whether removing this gene in
humans would have the same effect.
3471/ The British first saw the
potential of rockets in war in 1792 when Indian soldiers attacked
them with volleys of over 2000.
3472/ A British rocket attack
on US soliers is celebrated in the lyrics of the US National
Anthem.
3473/ The British used 25,000
rockets to destroy Copenhagen in 1807.
3474/ More than 15,000 people
were saved by life saving 'rope-rockets' at sea between 1871
and 1962.
3475/ Five mighty F-1 engines,
each producing 680,000kg of thrust, were used to power the
Saturn V Rocket used for moon landings,
3476/ A modern rocket engine
can produce 3000 times more power than a car engine of the
same size.
3477/ An estimated 1000 satellites
will be rocket launched between 1999 and 2008. The value of
these launches to rocket owners could be more than £20
billion.
3478/ It was the Chinese who
invented a firework-style rocket in the early 12th Century.
Subsequently these 'arrows of flaming fire' were developed
for warfare and by the 15th Century the Chinese had even developed
multiple rocket launchers.
3479/ In 1919, the brilliant
US scientist Robert Goddard suggested rockets could be used
to put scientific instruments into the stratosphere. Other
experts were scepical, and when Goddard began suggesting rockets
might reach the moon he was ridiculed. But Goddard, a true
visionary, proved them all wrong. In the 1920's he began developing
the first liquid-fuelled rocket, and in March 1926 it shot
into the sky from his test site at Ward Farm near Auburn in
Massachusetts.
3480/ The first US and Soviet
ICBMs (Intercontinental ballistic missiles) were built on
the back of research done in Germany in the late 1930's. When
the Nazi's took power in Germany, more money was pumped into
rocket research, and in 1937 a mighty research centre was
established at Peenemunde in Northern Germany under the control
of Wernher von Braun. When the facility was overrun at the
end of World War 2; both the United States and the USSR spirited
away the scientists working at the facility to work on their
own rocket projects.
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