I learned this today. A nut is a hard-shelled pod that contains the fruit and a seed. The difference between a nut and a seed is the hard outer shell. A seed is an embryonic plant. It contains protein, vitamin B, minerals, fat, and dietary fiber. These are all of the things that the seed […]
#161 What is a nut? Read More »
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 years ago. The Devonian Extinction 365 million years ago. The Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago. The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction 210 million years ago. The Cretaceous-Tertiary
#139 What are the six great mass extinction events? Read More »
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 the body, and they all do different tasks. For example, neurons in the brain, white blood cells that fight infection, muscle cells, and the
#137 What are stem cells and how do they work? Read More »
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 acid. It is a chemical that your brain produces. It is an amino acid and is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It inhibits brain
#134 How does Valium (diazepam) work on the brain? Read More »
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 neither. They are animals. They are thousands of tiny animals collected together. Because of this, they are known as colonial organisms. They belong to the
#133 Is coral a plant or an animal? Read More »
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. New cells in our bodies form through growth and division. When cells become old and need to be replaced, they are switched off and die.
#127 How does cancer kill people? Read More »
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 when your body has a bacterial, viral or parasitic infection. Other things, such as alcohol withdrawal and heat stroke, can also cause a fever. Raising
#124 What makes the body produce a fever? Read More »
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. The skin is said to be the largest organ in the human body. Actually, by surface area, it is the second largest because the inside
#82 Why is skin waterproof? Read More »
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 6 million. On top of this, the part of their brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is about 40 times larger than ours. It
#79 Can dogs smell cancer? Read More »
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 able to withstand a fairly large range of temperatures, but we have to wear clothes to do this. Ancient humans started wearing clothes about 780,000
#63 Why do we feel pain when we touch cold or hot things? Read More »
