Hold Music Improves, But Slowly

New findings show music can make alcohol taste sweeter

(NEWSER) - Make sure you have a designated driver the next time you head to a rock concert: Booze tastes sweeter when it's drunk in an environment where loud music is playing, which means blaring tunes could lead to excessive alcohol consumption, finds a new study. "Since humans have an innate preference for sweetness, these findings offer a plausible explanation as to why people consume more alcohol in noisy environments," says the study's author. More»

Composer saw creatures emerging from piano

(NEWSER) - The 19th-century composer Frédéric Chopin suffered frightening hallucinations, ranging from ghosts to creatures coming out of his piano. Now, researchers believe the visions may have been prompted by temporal lobe epilepsy, the Daily Telegraph reports. The disease can cause short, detailed hallucinations, and “could easily have been overlooked by Chopin’s doctors,” researchers note in Medical Humanities . More»

First movement of John Cage's 4'33 becomes April Fool's giveaway

(NEWSER) - ITunes' April 1 giveaway is a landmark composition by avant-garde American composer John Cage, Gizmodo reports. The first movement of Cage's 4'33—an experimental piece consisting entirely of silence—has been made available for free download, although listeners who enjoy the first minute and 46 seconds of silence and want to hear the rest will have to cough up $1.98. More»

(NEWSER) - "At last, science has produced the case for cougars," writes Emily Nussbaum in New York. A study analyzing more than 50,000 pregnant women found that older fathers produce progeny that score lower on concentration, memory, and learning tests. Older mothers, on the other hand, are associated with smarter children, meaning the brightest kids "must be the outcome of 45-year-old career women inseminated by their 21-year-old personal trainers." More»

Blue, meanwhile, looks to enhance our creativity

(NEWSER) - The color red boosts performance on detail-oriented work, while blue enhances creativity, Wired reports. A new study primed subjects with the colors before assigning them different tasks, and the results appear to confirm previous research that links red to caution and attention. “Think about red, and what comes to mind: stop lights, stop signs, danger, ambulances,” one of the authors says. More»