High-speed video footage has captured for the first time, what researchers say are hundreds of tiny aerosol particles being released from raindrops when they impact with soil.


The mechanical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who observed the aerosol release in action, say it could account for the earthy smell that accompanies rain after a long dry spell.

Source: http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-raindrops-releasing-aerosols-during-slow-motion-impact ...

There's more to studying than simply memorization and practice. It turns out that your diet also plays a pivotal role in recalling key bits of information, while keeping you energized and focused in the process. We're not talking about those scam-ridden supplements that promise a boost in brain power, but simple natural foods such as milk, nuts, seeds, rice, and oats.

The nutrients found in these items help your study efforts by releasing natural memory enhancers called CCKs ( cholecystokinin). When CCK crosses the blood-brain barrier, it acts as a neurotransmitter associated with memory. Studies have shown that learning and memory processes are severely damaged (in rats) that genetically do not respond to the presence of CCK. And in people ...

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but what’s influencing our eye? Scientists reveal that it’s not genetics but life experiences that lead us to find one face more attractive than another. This finding furthers the on-going debate of nature versus nurture.

Here's how the study went down: Researchers asked 547 pairs of identical twins and 214 pairs of same-gender fraternal twins to view 200 faces and rate them on a scale of one to seven, with one being the least attractive and seven the most attractive. A group of 660 non-twins then completed the same survey. If genes were more involved in facial preference, identical twins would have had similar ratings; if the influence of a familial environment carried more weight, fraternal twins w ...

Sometimes it pays to have big, bad neighbors! Tiny black-chinned hummingbirds (shown above) have learned to build their homes near hawk nests. The hawks are too big to be interested in teeny hummingbird eggs, and they scare off the medium-sized birds that are.

According to the study, of the 342 hummer nests studied over three years, 80% were near hawk nests - and for good reason. The researchers monitored hummingbird egg and fledgling survival near six active and six inactive hawk nests. Those hummers unlucky enough to be near inactive nests lost all but 8% of their young, while those in a “good” neighborhood had a 70% success rate, they report.

Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/09/why-hawk-hummingbird-s-best-friend ...

In a new study, scientists have discovered that early marijuana use may result in abnormal brain function and lower IQ. To conduct this study, four groups of teenagers were recruited:

• Those with depression who were not marijuana users
• Those with depression who were frequent marijuana users
• Frequent marijuana users without depression
• and healthy individuals who were not marijuana users

Participants were later divided into youth who started using marijuana before the age of 17 and those who began using it later or not at all.

These participants underwent psychiatric, cognitive and IQ testing as well as brain scanning. The study found no evidence that marijuana use improved depressive symptoms; there was no difference in psychiatric symptoms between ...

Someone who greatly enjoys sweet foods is said to have a "sweet tooth." Experimental evidence now shows us that eating sweets forms memories that may control eating habits. In other words, people may enjoy eating sweets because the taste is correlated with positive memories.

The findings, published online in the journal Hippocampus, show that neurons in the dorsal hippocampus, the part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory, are activated by consuming sweets. Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular time and place.

In the study, a meal consisting of a sweetened solution, either sucrose or saccharin, significantly increased the expression of the synaptic plasticity marker called activity ...

For decades, scientists have debated whether rapid eye movement sleep - the phase where dreams appear - is directly involved in memory formation. Now, a study provides evidence that REM sleep does, indeed, play this role in mice.

In this new study, the researchers used optogenetics, a recently developed technology that enables scientists to target precisely a population of neurons and control its activity by light. For this study, the neurons in the hippocampus were targeted (hippocampus being the structure that is critical for memory formation during wakefulness and is known as the 'GPS system' of the brain).

To test the long-term spatial memory of mice, the scientists trained the rodents to spot a new object placed in a controlled environm ...