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It's False It’s actually blue light, not ultraviolet, that’s used to treat cases of neonatal jaundice. The discovery was made by a nurse who took some jaundiced children out in the sunshine. When she looked at them later, patches of their skin exposed to the sun were less yellow. Subsequent tests proved that bilirubin, the chemical which causes jaundice, is broken up by blue light.

It's False That’s the weight of a sperm whale. Blue whales can be 100 tonnes and 30 metres in length.

It's False It’s actually four minutes. There are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour, meaning that there are 24 times 60, which is 1440 minutes in a day. There are 360 degrees in a circle, so 1440 divided by 360 equals 4. So 4 minutes per degree of longitude as you go around the planet.

It's True The moon is spinning more slowly than the Earth – it takes 28.5 days to complete one revolution, which is also the length of the lunar cycle. So a day on the moon actually lasts 28.5 times longer than a day on Earth.

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There is a chemical in suncream that interacts with, and soaks up, ultraviolet light (the component of sunlight which is known to be linked to skin cancer because it damages DNA.).  It then re-radiates the energy in a less harmful form.

It works in a similar way to a striplight or a TV screen.  The phosphor on the front of a CRT television screen is hit by a high-energy beam, which causes atoms in the phosphor to jump up to a high energy ‘excited’ state.  When these electrons fall back down to a low energy state, they spit out some radiation as visible light.

The same thing happens in suncream; the chemical absorbs the UV radiation, electrons jumps to an excited level and fall again. As they fall, they release the energy in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a part that is not viewed as harmful, usually heat or infrared radiation.

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You’ve probably heard of pro-biotic products, usually yoghurt drinks, which actually contain live bacteria that are said to influence the bugs that live in your intestines.  There’s also a parallel effect called a pre-biotic effect, based on the idea that the food you eat is also the food that your gut bacteria eat.  So if you eat certain foods yourself, it’s said to influence the spectrum of bacteria that live in you.

It’s possible, although we don’t have any evidence either way, that there might be something in the bramble that’s influencing the digestive system of the pig and therefore affecting the kinds of bacteria they can carry. (Coal contains carcinogenic compounds, so is probably not a good thing to eat).

If you eat a lot of porridge, that’s very rich in beta glucans, which is very good for encouraging certain types of micro-organisms, said to be good bacteria, which contribute to warding off illnesses.

You can read more about probiotic products here.

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Yes they do.  Noroviruses used to be called winter vomiting disease, because they mainly occurred in the winter.  Influenza is so called because of “Influenza del freddo” – the influence of the cold in Italian,

The only time you get noroviruses significantly in the summer months is when you get a new strain from an RNA mutation.  More usually you get infections between October and March.