Fun Facts About Everything & Anything: Vol. #07
  Written By Girly

Did You Know...
The 2001 Durex Global Survey reveals that despite the worldwide spread of HIV/AIDS and the increasing number of people with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) almost half the global population (46%) remains unconcerned about becoming infected.

And coming at a time when the United Nations has called for international action to fight the pandemic, the statistics are cause for concern.

Almost four in 10 (38%) are still taking no measures to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS or another STI, and the 2001 Global Survey also reveals stark differences in the attitudes of people within individual nations.

The UN has outlined that education is key in fighting HIV/AIDS and the survey reveals that globally 85% of 16-20 year olds are now learning about sex in school - significantly more than previous generations.

And it seems that although there are wide variations in the way sex education is taught across the world, young people are listening with 16-20 year olds showing greater personal concern about HIV/AIDS than any other age group. Just 7% admit they don't use contraception, compared with almost three in 10 of the over 45s (28%), and almost two thirds (68%) use condoms to protect themselves from STI's and unplanned pregnancies.

Did You Know...
Some restaurants in Britain are forcing customers who like their meat rare to sign a disclaimer form before eating due to fears of the risk of E-coli and salmonella poisoning, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. It said that restaurants including food chains Planet Hollywood, All Bar One and Shoeless Joe's were prepared to serve rare hamburgers, sausages or minced beef only if diners complete forms giving up rights to take legal action. The newspaper said that people eating minced beef which is pink in the middle are much more likely to be poisoned by E-coli or salmonella. The new practice has been blamed on advice from the government's food safety watchdog saying that minced meat should only be served when it is well-done. The warning does not apply to ordinary steaks, because they only carry bacteria on the outside and this is killed by cooking.

Did You Know...
The dream of perpetual youthful good looks could soon become reality. Ageing adults, ravaged by wrinkles and sagging flesh, could in future have skin as smooth and glowing as in their prime.

Scientists are devising ways to take a sample of someone's skin when they are young, store it for decades, and then clone it for when they are older. The doctors claim it will get rid of wrinkles and lines, bulk out thinning lips and eradicate acne scars.

The 'Cell Storage System' being developed by the US biotechnology firm Isolagen begins when a 3 millimetre skin sample is taken from behind someone's ear when they are young. The sample is stored and retrieved when the person has signs of ageing. It is cloned to make a 'culture' from which the proteins that keep skin taut and supple are extracted, turned into liquid, and injected. The rejuvenating effects are thought to be long lasting or permanent.

Dr Nick Lowe, clinical professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, and an adviser to Isolagen, said: 'You immortalise a skin sample, then store them, and then reactivate them to get collagen and elastin, and inject them into the skin.'

Collagen, the fibre under the skin that prevents flesh sagging, is already used in cosmetic therapies. Elastin is a protein that keeps skin taut.

Isolagen, which has offices in the UK, has developed the technique of taking a sample of an adult's skin, cultivating it, and injecting collagen and elastin back. It will launch the process in the UK this summer.

Did You Know...
Fish can drown!! In fact fish, like people, need oxygen to live.

A fish out of water, is a fish out of its element. A fish comes fully equipped with a pair of gills, which it uses to breathe under water. The gills extract life-sustaining oxygen from the hydrogen in the water molecules, in order to regulate the amount of oxygen intake. This maintains the necessary balance of the two components of water for the fish to survive.

When a fish is taken out of water, and exposed only to air, not to oxygen and hydrogen containing water, its gills are unable to control the oxygen intake, the delicate balance cannot be maintained, and the gills inhale a lethal overdose of oxygen. The fish essentially experiences death by "drowning."

Did You Know...
Both men and women tend to be more troubled if their partner falls in love with someone else--an emotional infidelity--than if their partner has a sexual infidelity, despite one theory that the genders differ in their jealousy reactions, according to one psychologist.

"Both men and women focus more on emotional aspects of infidelity rather than sexual," study author Dr. Christine R. Harris told Reuters Health. "This works against this notion that men are pre-wired to care about sexual infidelity and women to care about emotional infidelity. It suggests the genders are more similar than different," said Harris, who is a research scientist at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.

Previous research by evolutionary psychologists has theorized that natural selection encouraged the genders to evolve different emotional reactions to jealousy.

Under this view, men might tend to be more jealous of a woman's sexual infidelity because it could lead him to parenting children he did not, in fact, father. Women, meanwhile, were shaped to be more jealous when their partner developed an emotional bond to another woman, for fear he would stop providing resources for her own offspring.

However, Harris observed, most of this work has been based on studies that only found these gender differences when they asked college students to respond to hypothetical questions of which scenario would bother them more.

In this study, Harris recruited around 200 heterosexual and homosexual adults and asked them how they would respond to infidelity in theory, but also how they responded in an actual instance of cheating in their romantic past. The results were published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Harris found that when asked to recall actual instances of infidelity, both men and women focused more on the emotional aspect than the sexual aspect.

"When it comes to jealousy, men and women both care about both forms of infidelity," she said. "They care about their mates having sex with someone else and their mates falling in love with someone else."

Harris said her finding questions whether evolutionary psychologists have made correct assumptions about what importance infidelity had to men and women. "It raises a question if our ancestral environment was the way evolutionary psychologists believe," she pointed out. "Maybe cuckoldry or resource loss was not a major risk."

It also questions whether there is a gender-specific reaction to jealousy, or whether all humans have a more generalized reaction. "This suggests a more general jealousy mechanism could have existed," she noted. "Maybe you don't need such specificity."

The findings also demonstrated that the majority of the couples broke up over the infidelity, although women were twice as likely as men to break it off if their partners cheated.

"Jealousy is an extremely powerful emotion and it can have strong consequences, so understanding the underpinnings seems like a valid area of study," she said. "If we think men and women are different, fine, but let's make sue (those claims) are well documented.

Did You Know...
A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.

Did You Know...
The citizens of Japan are even more concerned about hygiene than Americans. (Accordingly, stories marveling at their obsessiveness are a favorite of American media coverage of Japan.) Japanese manufacturers pump out antibacterial telephones, scissors and deposit books. One company claims to sell a million antibacterial ballpoints a month. Some department stores have whole sections of antibacterial products.

Did You Know...
A flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.

Did You Know...
If you are living in the outer suburbs and exurbs, outer region of the city, you are not as safe as you think you are. According to Professor William Lucy, a University of Virginia Professor, who recently completed a study urban and suburban safety. His conclusions are based on the number of traffic deaths, robberies, assaults and rapes. Basically, his advice is to go where you think it's unsafe and you'll probably make a better choice.

Did You Know...
If you wrote down a job description and a salary for the many tasks, errands and services the average Mom does for her family … it would come up to Big Bucks!!

According to Ann Crittenden, author of The Price of Motherhood, she thinks that "Motherhood" is a skilled mi-level Management position. A survey performed by Edelman Financial services for year 2002, where over 200 000 women were interviewed, concluded that our Mom should be earning an astonishing 635 000$ US/year.

Now of course Mom doesn't work all day, every day. Instead, Mom switched form role to role depending on the situations. Mom's work is unquantified by the Federal Government. However, many companies are changing their mentalities when it comes to family and sick leave policies in order to help alleviate the stress of "Motherhood".

And Dad (or other family figure) MUST help shoulder the burden of parenting. Just be glad that Mom isn't asking you for a salary! We should appreciate our Moms more for all the things that they do and for who they are!