A typical DNA molecule is so long and thin that if it were the thickness of spaghetti, it would be 5 miles or 8 km long.

There are 26 billion cells in a new born baby and about 100 trillion cells in an adult. There are about 210 known distinct human cell types.

There are 206 bones in the average body. However, there are a few people who have more, such as an extra pair of ribs, making 13 pairs instead of 12 and therefore 208 bones in total.

At least 21 different organs - such as heart, liver and kidneys - can now be successfully transplanted into patients. Kidneys are the most common organs to be transplanted; they remove waste products from the blood stream.

Nails grow at an average rate of 3 millimeters a month. The slowest growing finger nail is on the thumb nail and the fastest growing is the fingernail on the middle finger.

The strongest muscle in the body is the masseter muscle, which is located in the jaw.

The brain sends messages to other parts of the body at the rate of 240 mph.

The tongue has 3,000 taste buds, each with a sensory nerve connected with the brain that carries impulses which the brain interprets and passes judgment.

The ears have 100,000 auditory cells. Minute nerves ending in the inner ear pick up a particular sound frequency and start vibrating.

Other interesting things about the human body:

• During a night's sleep a person may change position as many as 40 times and have around 5 dreams
• One in three children in America has a weight problem, and over 9 million are obese or overweight
• Eating lots of eggs, meat, or cauliflower can lead to really stinky farts

1. Did you ever experience having difficulty, or painful, or incomplete urination? The medical term for this is - dysuria
2. Is it your habit to grind your teeth during sleep or when otherwise under strain? My little brother used to have this habit called - bruxism
3. What do you call the inability to urinate? The term for this is - anuria
4. There are certain women who are experiencing painful sexual intercourse. They call it - dyspareunia.
5. Are you having difficulty is swallowing? The medical term for this is - dysphagia
6. A person having an offensive mouth odor, usually caused by poor oral hygiene is called - halitosis
7. One of my dorm mates in college used to sleepwalk while he's sleeping. The act of walking while asleep (popularly known as sleep walking) is - somnam bulism.
8. Dyslexia is the loss of the ability to read due to a central brain lesion
9. What do you call a person who is toothless? Toothless or having no teeth is - edentulous
10. Bedwetting usually occurs to children but in some cases, even adults. The pathological term for incontinence of urine is - enuresis.
11. Nosebleed in pathology is - epistaxis
12. Rhytidoplasty is a medical term which means face lift
13. A premature infant or baby is called - premie
14. Morbid acuteness of hearing in pathology is - hypercusia
15. Hyperopia or hypermetropia is an abnormal condition of the eye in which objects at a distance are seen more plainly than those near at hand means farsightedness
16. Hyperpyrexia is a term in pathology which means very high fever
17. Gonad is a male or female sex gland in which the gametes develop; ovary or testicles
18. Another word for a woman who's pregnant - gravid
19. Another term for influenza is - grippe
20. Did you experienced having blood in your urine? Hematuria is the medical term for bloody urine; blood in the urine

Here's an additional list;

1. Hematoma - blood tumor
2. Integument means skin
3. Lunula or lunule is a word of Latin origin which means- the living part of the nail, the pale half-moon shape at the nail base
4. Mastoplasty is a the medical term for a surgical procedure to reduce the size of the breast
5. Micturate is a medical term which simply means to urinate
6. Miliaria is an acute inflammatory disease of the sweat glands marked by an eruption of vesicles and papulae of the size of a pinpoint or larger or simply known as prickly heat
7. Multipara is the term for a woman who has borne more than one child or who is parturient the second time
8. Myopia is a defect in vision that objects can bee seen distinctly only when very near - nearsightedness. Myope is one who is near-sighted.
9. Mydriasis is an abnormal or prolonged dilation of the pupil of the eye
10. Neonate simply means a newborn baby or infant
11. Nocturia is a term in pathology which means frequent urination during the night
12. Osteitis is the medical term for the inflammation of the bone. Osteomata are tumors consisting of bony substances.
13. Patella is the flat, movable, oval bone, in front of the knee joint - knee cap
14. Primipara is a woman pregnant for the first time or who has borne one child
15. Bulimia is a disorder involving over eating followed by self-induced vomiting

The cuticle of the fingernail. This is a very thin band of tissue that goes down underneath the nail wall.

Glabella

The area between the eyebrows. This is a flat area just above the nose.

Lunula

The white half moon on the bottom of your fingernails.

Phalanx

Any one of the bones in the toes, or fingers. There are three phalanges in each finger and two in each big toe and thumb.

Philtrum

The groove right in the middle of the upper lip.

Canthus

The corner of the eye where the two lids meet.

1. The human body is made up of 6 chemical elements; oxygen - 65%; carbon - 18%; hydrogen - 10%; nitrogen - 3%; calcium - 2%; and phosphorous - 1%
2. At the time of birth the head is about ¼ the length of the body when we reach adulthood it is 1/8 the length of the body



3. If one parent has blue eyes and the other has brown, the child will normally have brown eyes because brown is genetically dominant
4. The inner ear is responsible for the sense of balance



5. Three of the smallest bones in the body are located in the ear; the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup.



6. No two brain cells are alike



7. Glucose is the main source of energy of the brain



8. The brain of average human male (3 lbs) is heavier than human female (2.7 lbs).



9. The thinnest skin in the body is the eyelids - with an average of 1/32 of an inch (0.8 mm).



10. The thickest skin in the body is the sole - with an average of 1/8 of an inch (3.2 mm).



11. The tallest species of man are the Watusi of Burundi and Rwanda in Africa

    

    

The distribution of seeds in sunflower is spiral. The seeds of the sunflower spiral outwards in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions from the center of the flower. The number of clockwise and counterclockwise spirals are two consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.

The shells of the snails follow the Fibonacci sequence. In the same way, the shells of the nautilus follow the same rule. The only difference between these two is that nautilus' shells grow in a three-dimensional spiral, whereas snails' shells grow in a two-dimensional spiral.

Pine cones are one of the well-known examples of Fibonacci sequence. All cones grow in spirals, starting from the base where the stalk was, and going round and round the sides until they reach the top.

Another notable example is human body.In human body, the ratio of the length of forearm to the length of the hand is equal to 1.618, that is, Golden Ratio. Another well-known examples on human body are:

1. The ratio between the length and width of face
2. Ratio of the distance between the lips and where the eyebrows meet to the length of nose
3. Ratio of the length of mouth to the width of nose
4. Ratio of the distance between the shoulder line and the top of the head to the head length
5. Ratio of the distance between the navel and knee to the distance between the knee and the end of the foot
6. Ratio of the distance between the finger tip and the elbow to the distance between the wrist and the elbow

The same sequence exists on the leaves of poplar, cherry, apple, plum, oak and linden trees.

The simple answer here is because people get old. Not an answer that satisfies your average child though! It is all to do with pigment and cells. The hair is like a tube that is full of both and in-between are spaces. In young people this space is filled with a fluid and this has the job of keeping the cells and the pigments in their place. That means that young people keep their hair color really well because, let's face it, they are full to brimming with fluids of one kind or another. As we get older we don't produce as many - ahem - fluids and the space between the cells and the pigment is filled with air instead. This means that the pigment is gradually lost and the process of graying reflects that.

It's all about sebum! This can produce hilarity among a group of ten year olds because they see bum everywhere and they love double entendres as much if not more than adults. Sebum is produced from the sebaceous gland (each hair has one at its, err, bottom) and it is pumped out to make a layer that stops Mr H20 getting in to our skin. It also keeps it bouncy and stretchy. However, we do not have any hairs on the palms of our hands - or for that matter the soles of our feet! The water can then get in to our skin and makes it wrinkly. The wrinkliness - rather than puffiness or swollenness - is caused because of the ridgy way the layers of our skin are joined together. A simple answer here might be simply because our palms aren't waterproof!

It's all to do with sympathy! Or rather it is when our sympathetic nervous system goes in to overdrive. This is a system of nerves that we have no control over whatsoever. The nerves become more active due to what we are experiencing in the real world. So, an ordinary encounter with a friend, someone we find attractive or a customer can turn out to be socially embarrassing due to no fault of our own! Another reason for blushing is a little simpler. When we experience heightened emotions it causes an increase of blood to the face. Blood is red and you know the rest of the story. The reason we don't stay red - now that would be funny - is that our nervous system returns to normal after a short time.

Well, for a start, you can tell the inquiring infant terrible that the funny bone is, in truth, a nerve. It runs through a ridge in the bone really close to the inside of the skin. The proper name is the ulnar nerve and it is called this because its route is directly through the ulna, which is one of the bones on your forearm. It's the bone on the outside - get them to give it a feel! The ulnar nerve is a very important nerve because it gives us the feelings we have in our hands.

When you stick people in the ribs with your elbow, they might tell you that your bones are very sharp! That is because the ulna sticks out. So, the ulnar nerve, being so close to the surface, is easy to bump. When the ulnar nerve is knocked it can be quite painful and pain can often cause people to laugh just as much as cry. This is why it is called the funny bone.

Most kids know that women's nipples serve a purpose. They can question though, why on earth dad has them too. Until around the tenth to fifteenth week in the womb there is no evidential difference between male and female embryos. After this, the hormones kick in (strange that it is around the same time, but only in years, in children!) and if dad has passed on a Y chromosome then a boy begins to form. When the second chromosome is an X then the embryo will become a girl. Before the hormonal kick in, however, the nipples have already been produced. Once made, they cannot be dissolved back into the fluids in the womb! So, that's why men have nipples because at some point (for a very short amount of time) everyone is a girl!

For the answer to this question we have to look inside the body to the kidneys. The kidneys are there to do two things - the first is to make sure that waste is filtered out of our blood. The second is to keep the amount of salt we have in our blood at the same level. So, when we take a leak the main stuff inside the urine is water, salt and the rubbish our body doesn't need. The main substance that we don't want from the cells in our bodies that we get rid of through our urine is ammonia. From blood it is the “hem” bit of the hemoglobin (Who put the “heem” in the hemoglobin?” as the old song goes!). This is called bilirubin and was discovered by a gentleman called William Rueben. That very poor joke aside, the ammonia and the billirubin get to the liver and are converted in to substances that are much less dangerous to us.

Urea comes from the ammonia and the bilirubin is converted to something called urobilogens. Salt, urea and water have no color. But! Urobilogens are yellow! So if you have had a lot of water to drink your urine will appear lighter. If you haven't had much water to drink then your urine will appear yellow, getting darker and darker the more dehydrated you are. If this is too much information to take in, tell the kid it depends on the amount of bananas we eat.

Very fast. That's 43 kilometers per hour, which is twenty seven miles an hour. This, of course, is only over short distances. At this point reflect that although the adult male can run at this speed for only a short amount of time a small version of an adult can ask questions ad infinitum. Then go try and figure out why.

Sometimes! The only parts of the ear that can continue to grow are the lobes. Most people will not experience this as once the head stops growing (although with some people it never seems to!) then so do the ears. The only organ of the human body that continues to grow throughout life is the nose - and this only a teensy weensy little bit. You could perhaps punish your offspring for their interminable biological questioning by telling them that their ears and nose will grow a millimeter a year for their whole life. That will stop them asking questions for a while as they ponder a Pinocchio like future!

Recent advances in nanotechnology have led to the possibility of seeking and destroying tumor cells within the human body! In fact, nanotechnology has become so advanced that scientists today can destroy a tumor cell with minimum harm to the tissues around it. In addition, the use of nanoscience through polymerical micelles has become a source for anti-tumor drug delivery. The exploration of the many possibilities of nanotechnology can only be beneficial.

Quantum Dots, known as QD's, have been used to image cancer cells in the past. With the completion of the Human Genome Sequence, scientists have been able to tell a cancerous cell from a healthy cell. Quantum Dots range from 1 nanometer, which is a billionth of a meter, to 10 nanometers, to 100 nanometers.

Fluorescent Quantum Dots, depending on their size, are excited at appropriate wavelengths, which cause them to emit different colored lights. Smaller Quantum Dots emit smaller wavelengths than larger dots, which means they also emit different colors. If Quantum Dots of many different sizes are deposited into your body and each dot produces a different color, your body would emit in a multi-colored fluorescent glow, which can depict, with colors, cancerous cells and tumors.

This array of colors can provide a detailed picture at molecular and cellular levels. Having a picture at this extremely small level could provide images of which cells are cancerous, and those cancerous tissues can be removed through surgery, or other methods in the fields of nanotechnology.

Other advantages of using Quantum dots are that the intensity of the signal sent out by the dots are more intense, the signal to noise ratio is higher, and the stability of the dots is better than regular fluorescent molecules.

In fact, the Quantum Dots are so stable that a single cell could be followed throughout the body for days, or even weeks! (Kawasaki & Player, 2005) Having a picture at this extremely small level could provide images of which cells are cancerous, and those cancerous tissues can be removed through surgery, or another method of nanotechnology.

Quantum Dots have been also beginning to be used to “seek out and destroy” tumor and cancerous prostate cancer cells. (Wood, 2004) Quantum Dots are encapsulated in a protective coat, which prevents degradation within the body. (Wood, 2004) Experiments have been done on mice, showing that a Quantum Dot can effectively locate tumor cells. Inside this miniscule Quantum Dot there is an antibody to fight off cancer.

The Quantum Dot's can enter through the blood stream and the antibody within the independently dot searches out where the tumor is. When the tumor is found, the Quantum Dot produces a laser light which sinks deep into the tissue. (Wood, 2004) Then, the shell of the dot, which peaks in absorption near infrared converts the laser light it absorbs into heat destroying the tumor cells around it.

In other words, when a QD locates a tumor, it emits a laser light, and that light energy given off by the QD is absorbed by the shell of the dot, which is converted into heat energy, destroying tumor cells around it. Scientists suggest that this operation can be performed on human body tissues, where surgery of the tumor cannot be done.

This new-found technique has greatly encouraged the rise of nanotechnology which can be used to remove tumors without a surgical procedure. As you can see, advances in nanotechnology can give not only doctors an easier way to “take out” a tumor, but it would give the patient a much more painless option, one without knives and scars.

As scientists across the globe carefully study anti-tumor drugs, they begin to think about what the best way to distribute the drug throughout the body. This answer lies, too, in nanotechnology. Over the past few years, scientists have been exploring the world of polymeric micelles, which some believe are the future of drug distribution.

Obviously, nanotechnology is not only advancing in the field of fighting off and tracking down cancer, but it has also reached the point where new forms of drug delivery and release are feasible.

Today, scientists use long-circulating liposomes to deliver drugs. Polymeric micelles have several advantages over these long-circulating liposomes, which are currently one of the best ways of delivering a drug.

Polymeric micelles have more controlled drug release, tissue penetrating ability, and reduced toxicity.

Nanotechnology has opened so many more doors for the human race, and I it will continue to do so with more research and new inventions. Already, nanoscience has been able to find tumors, distribute drugs, and even provide pictures of cells at the molecular and cellular level!

Recent advances have even made destroying those tumors possible. If nanotechnology can do this much in just a few years, just image, in the course of just a few decades, what nanotechnology could do for not only Americans, but the entire world.