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News Year’s isn’t the only time you’re likely to drink too much. There are lots of clever hangover cures, most of which don’t work. But here’s a new one: asparagus.

The amino acids and minerals found in asparagus extract may alleviate alcohol hangover and protect liver cells against toxins. Chronic alcohol use causes stress on the liver as well as unpleasant physical effects associated with a hangover. Researcher B.Y. Kim says, “These results provide evidence of how the biological functions of asparagus can help alleviate alcohol hangover and protect liver cells.”
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Is smell influenced by our culture or are genes? As part of a year-long recreation of Darwin’s epic voyage on the HMS Beagle, olfactory scientist Sanne Boesveldt will explore how people respond to smell at each of the ship’s ports of call.

In each of the approximately 25 worldwide ports where the Beagle ship docks, crew members will ask local participants will complete a “scratch and sniff” smell test to evaluate their response to the same 12 odors. The researchers hope that the findings will provide insight into how our response to odor is influenced by culture and gender.
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For some things – Living trees are a vital part of the earth but fake ones can be important too. Engineers want to plant a forest of 100,000 “artificial trees” within the next 10 to 20 years to help soak up the world’s greenhouse gases by capturing the CO2 from the air through a filter. The greenhouse gas would then be removed from the filter and stored.

But this is basically what all trees do: Take in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. So why use fake trees? It turns out that an artificial tree could remove thousands of times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than a real tree of the same size.
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In order to dream, we first have to sleep. Humans spend about one-third of their lives asleep, but sleep researchers still don’t know why we do it.

The function of sleep is one of the 125 greatest unsolved mysteries in science. Theories range from brain “maintenance” to reversing damage from stress suffered while awake, to promoting longevity. None of these theories are well established, and some of them contradict each other.
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