1. Prices at the producer level are only 1.3 percent higher now than a year ago and are going down, even though floods in the Midwest and drought in the South are hurting crops and therefore raised corn and soybean prices.

2. Fossils of the arm of a sloth found in Puerto Rico in 1991, and dated at 34 million years old, made it the earliest known mammal of the Greater Antilles Islands.

3. Recently physicians have determined that stomach ulcers are not caused by stress, alcohol, or rich foods, but a bacterium that dwells in the mucous lining of the stomach.

4. The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than any other animal vet tested, thus allowing it to hunt efficiently under the gloomy conditions at its feeding depth of between 300 and 700 meters.

5. A mutual fund having billions of dollars in assets will typically invest that money in hundreds of companies, rarely holding more than one percent of the shares of any particular corporation.

6.  Positing an enormous volcanic explosion at the end of the Permian period would explain the presence of a buried crater, account for the presence of the element iridium ( originating deep within the earth), and the presence of quartz having been shattered high impact shock waves.

7. The 19-year-old pianist and composer performed his most recent work all over Europe, Asia, and North America last year, winning prestigious awards in both London as well as Tokyo for his achievement at so young an age, and he is hoping to continue composing now that he has returned to Chicago.

8. Starfish, with anywhere from five to eight arms, have a strong regenerative ability, and if one arm is lost it quickly replaces it, sometimes by the animal overcompensating and growing an extra one or two.

9. ln 2000, a mere two dozen products accounted for half the increase in spending on prescription drugs, a phenomenon that is explained not just because of more expensive drugs but by the fact that doctors are writing many more prescriptions for higher-cost drugs.

10. Similar to other early Mississippi Delta blues singers, the music of Robert Johnson arose from an oral tradition beginning with a mixture of chants, fiddle tunes, and religious music and only gradually evolved into the blues.