Sali's Easily Forgotten Info

Largest Cargo Planes: Aircraft are usually ranked by weight, the maximum takeoff weight in particular. The world’s largest plane is the Antonov An-225 Mriya built in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union. It’s maximum takeoff weight is over 1.3 million pounds (600,000 kg). It is commercially available for carrying ultra-heavy and oversize freight, up to 250,000 kg (550,000 lb) internally or 200,000 kg (440,000 lb) on the upper fuselage. Cargo on the upper fuselage can be 70 m long. A second An-225 was partially built during the late 1980s for use by the Soviet space program. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the cancellation of the Buran space program, the second An-225 was placed in storage.

Largest Commercial Plane: The Boeing 747, it can carry about 400 passengers on intercontinental flights. The 747 will not retain its title for long, however, since the new Airbus A380 will carry over 550 passengers and have a takeoff weight over 1.23 million pounds (560,000 kg).

First Fastest Airplane: The Tupolev Tu-144 was the first commercial airplane to exceed Mach 2. In 1969, July 15th, this supersonic transport aircraft became the fastest commercial airline ever.  In the sixties the engineers of the British/French “Concorde” and the Russian Tupolev TU-144 were competing for first place in getting a supersonic commercial plane airborne. On December 31, 1968 the first prototype of the Tupolev TU-144 took flight, before the Concorde did.  After two severe crashes the flights were discontinued. The last regular flight of a Tu-144 took place on June 1, 1978. Tupolev Tu-144 was nicknamed Concordski, which sounds like a Russian surname, but very similar to Concorde.  The only Tu-144 on display outside the former Soviet Union was acquired by the Auto & Tech Museum in Sinsheim, Germany, in 2001 and that’s where it now stands, in its original Aeroflot livery, on display next to an Air France Concorde.

Extreme Aircraft To be continued ….

“The eighth annual Back-to-School Campaign is underway. Get involved to help demonstrate demand for the State Children?s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and get eligible, uninsured kids enrolled!”

See What’s Happening To date, more than 4,000 events and activities have been planned in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as part of the eighth annual Back-to-School Campaign. Check out our events map to see what?s happening near you.

Yes, sleep.  How often have you tried to stay awake for nearly 24 hours? Maybe to work, study for an exam, to finish a project, or just having fun partying with friends. No matter the reason sleep deprivation is a big risk, both for your health and your environment. 

Twenty-four hours without sleep can produce as much impairment as being legally drunk.

As I was looking through www.howstuffworks.com I came across an interesting article. How Can Someone Stay Awake for 11 Hours?  A man in Cornwall, England, actually went 11 consecutive days without a wink of sleep.

The Guinness Book of World Records no longer acknowledges sleep deprivation attempts because they feel that they’re too dangerous. In 1964 the record  of 274 hours without sleep was set. This record was in the Guinness Book until they removed the category entirely in1989

Consequently, sleep deprivation is a major contributor to auto accidents and may have contributed to disasters such as the explosion at Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez crash. Sleep deprivation is also a major concern for people working long hours (such as doctors and night shift employees) and for anyone suffering from sleep apnea, which causes high blood pressure, stress and low oxygen levels in the blood. Repeated sleep deprivation can increase your appetite and lead to weight gain. 

Long-term sleep deprivation can cause vision problems, hallucinations, paranoia, mood swings, difficulty communicating or understanding others, a compromised immune system and depression.

www.howstuffworks.cm article by Jacob Silverman.

Ever wake up in the middle of the night (or day) and see a ghost or monster sitting on you or next to you?     There maybe an explanation.

There are 5 stages of sleep, one of them is R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) stage.  During this stage people dream, and extensive physiological changes occur, such as increased brain activity, accelerated respiration, eye movement, and muscle relaxation. In order to keep us from acting out our dreams our bodies secrete hormones that paralyze us.  During most regular sleep cycles the hormones begin to wear off even before the dream is completed, that’s why people wake up with a perfectly functioning body. However, sometimes an individual awakens before the hormones  become inactive.  They are now completely awake but paralyzed.  On occasion, immediately after the person is awake, they are startled by a terrifying visual hallucination. Sometimes this hallucination takes on a stereotypical form. It is usually a vision of a creature sitting on their chest and possibly choking them. Some people say that Alien Abduction victims are nothing more than Sleep Paralysis victims.  I haven’t experiences either one of  those things so I can’t say whether or not it’s true.  I guess either one is a possibility. I do think that all the millions of people that reported alien abduction deserve a better explanation.

If you want to know more….

Not all people waking up with a sleep paralysis hallucinate.  There are two types of sleep paralysis.  The Common Sleep Paralysis and the Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis (HSP) and the Hag phenomena. HSP is a lot less common.  The source of the hallucination has often been attributed to the hypnagogic state (the state between wakefulness and sleep.) 

 1) Whereas CSP is common and universal HSP is rare and seems to be geographically episodic.

2) CSP is of relatively short duration where HSP can last as long as seven or eight minutes.

3) The major difference of course is that CSP maybe unsettling for the sleeper but the HSP is accompanied by a nightmarish hallucination.”

Something to think about…..

“There is evidence that Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis seems to affect an area (e.g. a village) much like an epidemic. A region that has had no HSP’s reported may all of a sudden be inundated by sleepers suffering from HSP. Though this is relatively new research it seems regions stay infected for upwards to three years, with the most common being only a few months. There is of yet no explanation for this.”

Still think it’s sleep Paralysis?  Maybe not

via:http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004foe www.howstuffworks.com