Cyclopedia of Factoids - The Letter E

Eating Disorders

The media would have us believe that the victims of eating disorders are adolescents with psychological problems.

The truth is different. Both Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa are indeed more common among adolescents. But close to 80% of all deaths from anorexia nervosa are among people older than 45. Actually, the median age of death from eating disorders and related causes among women is 69 and among men - 80! One fifth of all adult sufferers are men.

http://dmoz.org/editors/editcat.cgi?cat=Health/Mental_Health/Disorders/Eating

Egg

A human female is born with 150,000 hollow balls of cells. Each "ball" - a follicle - contains an immature ovum (egg cell). By the age of 16-18, only 30-40,000 of these follicles survive. The destruction of follicles continues well into menopause when the few remaining follicles degenerate and die (though evidence emerged that generation of egg cells continues throughout the woman's reproductive life). Only 300-400 follicles mature during the woman's reproductive years 13-54. But the quality of the eggs deteriorates with time. In her early 30's, for instance, the rate of spontaneous abortions a woman endures reaches 28%. Menstruation occurs every 4 weeks.

A follicle from one of the two ovaries matures, the egg is extruded from the ovary and is made ready for fertilization in the reproductive tract. If not fertilized, it leaves the body together with the nutrients accumulated to feed a prospective embryo - and blood.

http://www.babycenter.com/expert/pregnancy/pregcomplications/4754.html

http://www.bartleby.com/107/3.html

Electric Chair

The electric chair was invented by a dentist, Alfred Southwick from Buffalo. But the modern implement was designed and tested by Harold Brown with the active support of Thomas Edison. Carlos McDonald and A. P. Rockwell contributed to the engineering of the chair. But the patent is registered to one, Edwin Davis, who used it to kill more than 300 prisoners.

Due to the body's high resistance, an alternating current of 2000-2400 volts is applied to electrocute the condemned. Only two electrodes, moistened with a salt solution, are attached to the scalp and to the calf of one leg. Death occurs two to five whole minutes after the jolt has been administered - but no one knows why or how. The electrical current may stop the heart before the victims are practically burnt or cooked to death. There is no proof either way. Willie Francis, who survived his first execution, described it thus:

"My mouth tasted like cold peanut butter. I felt a burning in my head and my left leg, and I jumped against the straps."

The chair has its own circuit, separate from the prison's - but it does feed off the public grid. Prison officials pull the switches or push the buttons.

The axe murderer, William Kemmler, was the first to be electrocuted in Auburn State Prison, New York, on August 6, 1890. By 1972 the chair was adopted by 25 states and the District of Columbia. More than 4300 inmates, including dozens of women, were "grilled" by the device in the United States. Only 11 of the 38 states that currently allow the death penalty still use the chair, though - and only 3 of those as an exclusive method of execution, as do the Philippines and China.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa102497.htm

http://www.albany.edu/~brandon/sparky.html

http://www.geocities.com/trctl11/chair.html

Electronic Mail

Both Electronic Mail and Instant Messaging were available as early as 1965. Queen Elizabeth of Britain sent her first email in 1976.

Users were sharing files - by placing them into common directories - even earlier (in 1961). The system was known as CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System). It was modified by Louis Pouzin, Glenda Schroeder, and Pat Crisman, Tom van Vleck and Noel Morris at the beginning of 1965 to include a MAIL command. Van Vleck and Morris also wrote an instant messaging tool into the software. An unknown hack added a "You've got mail" alert facility. Other timesharing systems - such as SDC and BBN - also included e-mail by autumn 1965. The military deployed AUTODIN (commissioned in 1962) and SAGE with full e-mail capabilities by 1966.

But these were same-machine e-mail applications. They could not connect different computers. ARPANET, a unit of the Department of Defence in the United States, was the first to achieve inter-connectibility.

Ray Tomlinson of ARPANET sent the first recognizable e-mail message in 1971. It was addressed to himself and read: "Testing 1-2-3". He then followed with a message to all ARPANET users with instructions on how to use the convention username@hostname.

At first, the use of the word "mail" was contentious as the Postal Office was thought to have a monopoly on sending personal notes and messages around. But the Postal Office, not realizing the importance of e-mail, did not object to the newly coined moniker e-mail.

http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap3.htm

Philosophical Musings and Essays
Essays about current topics in philosophy.