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LONDON: Bad at maths? Gorge on chocolates before you attempt your next examination.

People grumbling their way through the grimness of winter have better recall than those enjoying a carefree, sunny day, Australian researchers have found.


WASINGTON: Just the ring of a cell phone can pose a dangerous distraction for drivers, especially when it comes in a classroom setting or includes a familiar song as a ringtone, says a new study.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2009) — Learning to juggle leads to changes in the white matter of the brain, an Oxford University study has shown.

iPhone: If you've ever looked into text-to-speech transcription for your computer, you've certainly come across Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now the folks at Dragon have developed their own iPhone app that lets you dictate to your iPhone—and it works really well.



Combine endless toil with dumb luck and you've got talent.



The busier you get, the more stuff you forget, and navigating that mental clutter can be worse than steering through an asteroid field. Luckily, lots of intrepid galactic heroes have faced faulty memories, and created some handy techniques for remembering.

IMAGINE you are an experienced martial arts referee. You are asked to score a number of taekwondo bouts, shown to you on video. In each bout, one combatant is wearing red, the other blue. Would clothing colour make any difference to your impartial, expert judgement? Of course it wouldn't.

Push-ups, crunches and gyms are fine for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But can you meditate your way to a bigger brain?

Scientists have good and bad news for hard-driving people who boast they need only six hours of sleep a night. The good news is a few may be right: Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco have identified a family with a genetic mutation that causes members to require only six hours sleep a night. The bad news? The gene is vanishingly rare in humans, found in less than 3% of people.