It's False – People whose blood group is AB can receive blood from anyone, but only people with group O can give blood to anyone else.

It's False – it actually stands for intelligence quotient and is used as a measure of the population’s reasoning power.

It's True – They use their ability to detect carbon dioxide to home in on you for a meal.

It's True – insects like house flies have multi-faceted compound eyes and each contains over 4000 individual lenses.

It's True - Researchers in Japan studying the skeletons of macaques killed by local farmers because they were raiding their crops found that half of the monkeys had healed fractures with the males having the most. Since these monkeys rarely fight, and there were no signs of bite marks, the researchers conclude that the injuries must have been sustained by falling out of trees ! Not quite the aerial acrobats we thought they were !

It's False – your weight actually increases when you take off because the plane is accelerating you away from the surface of the earth. On the other hand when you fly through turbulence and the plane suddenly drops, producing that awful stomach-in-your-mouth feeling, your weight decreases because you are momentarily in free fall.

It's False – you can easily see 93 million miles – which is how far away the sun is from Earth

It's False – meteorites are often cold when they land, so reports of them starting fires are very unlikely to be true. That said, they can still do large amounts of damage as American Roy Fausset discovered recently; upon returning to his New Orleans home on 23rd September, he found that a meteorite had demolished his newly-renovated bathroom !

It's True – in 1986, David Childs achieved a record-breaking 2368 loops in a specially modified acrobatic aircraft.

It's True – Japanese scientists have added a gene to silk worms so that they can make the valuable medical protein collagen which can be used in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. When the silk worms build their cocoon, at least 10% of it is collagen, which is easy to extract for therapeutic use.

It's True – the friction generated by the air heats the outside of the shuttle to a scorching 2200 degrees Fahrenheit, which is why it needs special protective tiles.

It's True - US researchers surveyed 200 patients of 5 doctors, two of whom were obese. When they asked the patients how confident they felt about the medical advice given to them by their doctor, patients of the fatter doctors felt significantly less impressed, even when the advice had nothing to do with weight control. The researchers conclude that the take home message for medical students is “if you don’t look healthy yourself, patients will take your advice with a pinch of salt !”

It's False – it’s a more sedate 4 mph !

It's False – It weighs almost 400 tonnes, of which over 190 tonnes is fuel !

It's False , but they are planning to launch a flotilla of ‘microsatellites’, each measuring just 60cm across, that can visit near-earth objects larger than 400m across – like asteroids – to help scientists to judge the risk they pose to the earth.

It's False – plants look green because they contain the substance chlorophyll which reflects green light, but absorbs light of other colours. The energy in the absorbed light is used to drive chemical reactions in the plant that make it grow.

It's True – Researchers in Israel have made the world’s smallest biological computer and it’s in fact powered by DNA. The machine calculates by breaking and re-forming bonds in the DNA helix to release energy. The scientists estimate that a spoonful of their solution holds 15,000 trillion DNA computers.

It's False – bees and house flies flap their wings about 200 times a second, but hummingbirds flap their wings about 70 times a second.

It's True – Charles Babbage designed the difference engine, a vast mechanical calulator, in 1830. Although it was never built in his lifetime, it earned him the title of “forefather of the modern computer”. [There’s a working model in the science museum in London]

It's True – Glass and sand are both made of silica. By heating sand you can make clear glass.