Lovesick ruled by the brain

Question: When it comes to romantic love, what is our most important body part?

Answer: Don't laugh, it's our three-pound brain, says anthropologist Helen Fisher in "Why We Love." Fully one-third of our 33,000 human genes are devoted to brain functions. With our huge prefrontal cortex and its "combinatorial explosion" of connections, we assemble facts, solve problems, weigh options, make decisions, plan ahead.

We also add meaning and emotional value to our thoughts.

This is the brain region that lends us almost infinite capacity to think about "him" or "her" and to feel keen pleasures as well as fears, rage, aversion.

Our remarkable storage bin hippocampus enables us to remember our beloved in exquisite detail of facts and feelings. Maybe most important is the caudate nucleus — for focused attention and intense motivation to win rewards — spurring us into action with just a single lovesick gaze.

At some point, all of this jelled into a sort of primitive animal magnetism. By 35,000 years ago, our ancestors' brains had taken our modern shape, so that we have somehow emerged with special talents of wit, a charitable spirit and many other courting traits, including the astonishing human ability to fall "HEAD-over-heels in love."

Question: What does popcorn science have to say about why popcorn pops?

Answer: Plenty. Picture each kernel as a tiny pressure cooker where the water trapped inside vaporizes and turns the starchy guts into a molten mass, says Joshua Foer in "Discover" magazine. When a kernel explodes, the tough outer shell (pericarp) shatters and the gelatinous starch instantaneously solidifies.

The science may be new but not the snack. Popcorn took off in the United States in the early 19th century. Then in 1948, a team of archaeologists discovered a 4,000-year-old cob of popcorn in a New Mexico cave. "Remarkably, the kernels still popped."

Question: What's it take for a horse-borne cavalry regiment to capture an entire fleet of ships at sea? Without firing a shot, one might add.

Answer: It had to be one of the strangest "battles" in human history, as discussed by Roger Bentley in the "Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society," says Randy Cerveny in "Freaks of the Storm."