#139 What are the six great mass extinction events?
I learned this today. There have been six mass extinctions on Earth that experts know about. The Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction 440 million…
I learned this today. There have been six mass extinctions on Earth that experts know about. The Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction 440 million…
I learned this today. There are different types of stem cells, but they basically work by developing into different types of cells. There are 200 different types of cells in…
I learned this today. Diazepam is a benzodiazepine drug that works by increasing the amount of a chemical called GABA in the brain to inhibit electrical impulses. GABA is Gamma-aminobutyric…
I learned this today. Corals are animals because they don’t produce their own food. Corals are sometimes thought to be rocks and sometimes thought to be plants, but they are…
I learned this today. Cancer kills people because it grows into key organs, nerves or blood vessels and impairs their function. Cancer is caused when cells start to change abnormally.…
I learned this today. The body produces a fever because pyrogens cause the hypothalamus to raise its set-point for body temperature. Fever is a defense mechanism, and most fevers happen…
I learned this today. Our skin can allow sweat out, but it doesn’t let water in thanks to a thin layer of fat between the outermost layers of skin cells.…
I learned this today. Dogs can probably smell cancer in people. Dogs have a phenomenal sense of smell. They have 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. We have about…
I learned this today. We feel pain when we touch something very cold or very hot because of thermoreceptors in our skin that are activated by different proteins. Humans are…
I learned this today. The tallest a human could potentially grow is about 9 feet, 274cm. Humans grow because of a growth hormone called somatropin. It stimulates growth by telling…