Actually, solar minimum, the lowest point of the sun's 11-year activity cycle, isn't due until 2006, but forecasters expected 2005, the eve of solar minimum, to be a quiet year on the sun.

It has not been quiet. 2005 began with an X-flare on New Year's Day--a sign of things to come. Since then we've experienced 4 severe geomagnetic storms and 14 more X-flares.

"That's a lot of activity," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Compare 2005 to the most recent Solar Max: "In the year 2000," he recalls, "there were 3 severe geomagnetic storms and 17 X-flares." 2005 registers about the same in both categories. Solar minimum is looking strangely like Solar Max.

Scientists like Hathaway track the 11-year solar cycle by counting sunspots. When sunspot numbers peak, that's Solar Max, and when they ebb, that's solar minimum. This is supposed to work because sunspots are the main sources of solar activity: Sunspot magnetic fields become unstable and explode. The explosion produces a flash of electromagnetic radiation--a solar flare. It can also hurl a billion-ton cloud of magnetized gas into space--a coronal mass ejection or "CME." When the CME reaches Earth, it sparks a geomagnetic storm and we see auroras. CMEs can also propel protons toward Earth, producing a radiation storm dangerous to astronauts and satellites. All these things come from sunspots.

As expected, sunspot numbers have declined since 2000, yet solar activity persists. How can this be?

Hathaway answers: "The sunspots of 2005, while fewer, have done more than their share of exploding." Consider sunspot 798/808, the source of the Sept 7th superflare and eight lesser X-flares. All by itself, this sunspot has made Sept. 2005 the most active month on the sun since March 1991.

Weird? Much about the sun's activity cycle remains unknown, Hathaway points out. "X-ray observations of flares by NOAA's Earth-orbiting satellites began in 1975, and CMEs were discovered only a few years earlier by the 7th Orbiting Solar Observatory. Before the 1970s, our records are spotty."

This means we don't know what is typical. Scientists have monitored only three complete solar cycles using satellite technology. "It's risky to draw conclusions" from such a short span of data, he says.

Hathaway offers a cautionary tale: Before 2005, the last solar minimum was due in 1996 and the sun, at the time, seemed to be behaving perfectly: From late-1992 until mid-1996, sunspots began to disappear and there were precisely zero X-flares during those long years. It was a time of quiet. Then, in 1996 when sunspot counts finally reached their lowest value—bang!—an X-flare erupted.

"The sun can be very unpredictable," says Hathaway, which is something NASA planners must take into account when they send humans back to the Moon and on to Mars.

Returning to 2005: is this year an aberration--or a normal rush to the bottom of the solar cycle? "We need to observe more solar cycles to answer that question," says Hathaway. "And because each cycle lasts 11 years, observing takes time."

Meanwhile, Hathaway is waiting for 2006 when solar minimum finally arrives. Who knows what the Sun will do then?

The scientists measured the degree of correlation between activities in tens of thousands of brain regions. They found that many of the nodes had only a few connections, and a small number of nodes were connected to many others. These "super-connected" nodes act as hubs -- as with the Internet or your most gossipy friend -- getting the word out quickly and widely.

So maybe, the thinking goes, if you can figure out how the Internet works -- or why your gossipy friend succeeds -- then you can grasp your own mind.

Or, put more scientifically, these findings of basic principles of brain function suggest "that the underlying properties can be understood using the theoretical framework already advanced in the study of other, disparate, networks," Chialvo said. The research could help frame other studies of the brain's role in schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and chronic pain, Chialvo and his colleagues say.

The results were detailed in the Dec. 31 online version of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The changes were localized to the cingulate, caudate and insula regions of the brain. These areas are believed to be where emotions and thoughts are integrated.

The researchers believe the changes represent an increased awareness of the students' inner feelings and an improved ability to organize and integrate incoming sensory information; this synthesis helps shape the kinds of emotional and behavioral responses they have to new experiences.

The results are consistent with other research suggesting that the human brain continues to grow and mature right up to the point when we become adults and even beyond. In another study, researchers found that humans don't really develop the ability to handle multiple pieces of information at once until about the ages of 16 or 17.

"The brain of an 18-year-old college freshman is still far from resembling the brain of someone in their mid-twenties," said Craig Bennett, a graduate student who was involved in the new research. "When do we reach adulthood? It might be much later than we traditionally think."

The study will be detailed in an upcoming print issue of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

"It is a case of 'use it or lose it,'" said study leader Michael Valenzuela from the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales in Australia. "If you increase your brain reserve over your lifetime, you seem to lessen the risk of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases."

46 percent risk reduction

The study combined data from 29,000 individuals and 22 studies worldwide. It was detailed in a recent issue of the journal Psychological Medicine.

It found that individuals with high mental stimulation had a 46 percent decreased risk of dementia. The protective effect was present even in later life, so long as the individuals engaged in mentally stimulating activities.

The findings support the idea that a person's education, occupation, IQ and mental stimulation play a big role in preventing cognitive decline.

In a previous study, Valenzuela showed that after five weeks of memory-based exercise, participants increased brain chemistry markers in a direction that was opposite to that seen in Alzheimer's. The change was concentrated in the hippocampus, one of the first brain regions to be affected in dementia.

Exercise helps too

Another study found that older people who exercise three or more times a week had a 30 to 40 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's and other types of dementia. Even light activity, such as walking, seemed to help.

This study, led by Eric Larson of GroupHealth Cooperative in Seattle, was published in a recent issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The researchers tracked 1,740 people who were 65 and older over the course of nine years. The participants were all dementia-free at the beginning of the study.

At the end of the study, 77 percent of the individuals who were still free of dementia had reported exercising three or more times a week. The study could not determine whether certain types of exercise worked better than others.

In addition to preventing dementia, mental and physical exercise has also been found to boost the mood of depressed patients and improve memory in the elderly.

The results don't reveal why the brain shrinks, but it might involve degradation of neurons, which are the signal transmitters of the mind and body.

"It is possible it's just the stress of having to live with the condition," Apkarian told LiveScience. "The neurons become overactive or tired of the activity."

Another possibility is that people born with smaller numbers of neurons are predisposed to suffering chronic pain. But some of the differences measured "must be directly related to the condition," Apkarian said.

The research involved a one-time brain scan of 26 people who'd had unrelenting back pain for at least a year (and in one case for up to 35 years), along with a pain-free control group. Pain sufferers had lost 5 to 11 percent of gray matter over and above what normal aging would take away.

"People who have had pain for longer times have had more brain atrophy," Apkarian said.

No attempt was made to correlate brain size to brain function. It is possible that some of the shrinkage involves relatively noncrucial tissue -- other than neurons -- and that some of the effects are reversible if the pain is eliminated, Apkarian and colleagues write in the Nov. 23 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Apkarian said other varieties of pain might cause a similar atrophy of gray matter, and he plans to study that possibility in future studies.

"Suffering of pain is fundamentally an emotional condition," Apkarian said. "Different types of pain will have different types of emotional parameters, which will probably result in different types of atrophy -- different amounts and in different brain regions."

Some types of ongoing, inexplicable pain like arthritis are caused by intact, healthy nerve fibers rather than those that have been damaged, a new study finds.

The discovery surprised researchers. It had not been made before partly because studies of chronic pain have tended to focus on the damaged nerves.

The new understanding, reported in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Neuroscience, could help scientists develop new types of painkillers.

The evidence so far applies only to ongoing pain associated with nerve injury and inflammation, although it may turn out to be more widely applicable, said Sally Lawson, a professor of physiology at the University of Bristol in the UK.

What a pain

Information about pain is transmitted from its source by two types of nerve fibers, Lawson explained. Larger fibers send electrical signals more rapidly and are thought to communicate sharp, pricking pain.

Fine fibers communicate ongoing, burning pain that can prove depressing over time because it seems to have no identifiable source and is often hard to suppress with traditional painkillers.

Lawson and her colleagues Laiche Djouhri and Stella Koutsikou studied the ongoing pain and the firing in very fine fibers, in particular a type that serve as damage detectors. The faster they fire, the worse the ongoing pain becomes.

"The cause of this firing appears to be inflammation within the nerves or tissues, caused by dying or degeneration of the injured nerve fibers within the same nerve," Djouhri said.

Hope for some

More research is needed to figure out exactly which types of ongoing pain the discovery applies to, Lawson told LiveScience. Among the possibilities:

* Arthritis
* Chronic back pain
* Post-operative pain due to damage to nerves or tissues
* Trauma, especially injury to nerves, or inflammation
* Interstitial cystitis (a burning pain felt in the bladder)

"Further work is also needed to determine how the increased firing in the uninjured fine fibers could be prevented in order to alleviate the ongoing pain," Lawson said.

Standing behind the 30-strong group of dewy-eyed relatives and friends yesterday was a television camera crew recording their moment as part of a documentary. The couple, who won the contest which drew more than 250 contestants, were not put off by the fate of their predecessors, Greg Cordell and Carla Germaine, who married in the same way seven years ago, and split up three months later - after he allegedly cheated on her. Unlike the earlier couple who were brought together by a judging panel in January 1999, the Coopers' pairing was voted for by 100,000 members of the public who read the profiles of eight finalists on the internet.

The couple were whisked off to a press conference minutes after they had exchanged rings. They held hands, giggled and told the media that they already "fancied each other".

As winners of the Two Strangers and a Wedding II contest, they will have a paid-for honeymoon in Bermuda and be given the use of a city-centre flat and a car for 12 months, as well as being the "stars" of two television documentaries.

Mrs Cooper said she did not have any qualms about entering the competition. "Why not do it? It's very early to be in love but when I saw him, I thought he was absolutely lovely. After I get to know him, things can develop but ... he's very nice looking," she said.

Mr Cooper said his brother had been a finalist in the competition seven years ago. "I know it's kind of a strange thing to get your head around but the public has picked a great choice. She is the type of person I would have approached anyway," he said.

Organisers at BRMB radio station said the numbers of couples getting married was at an all-time low. So why not try something novel to boost the institution? Elliott Webb, the co-presenter of The Big Brum Breakfast show, said: "This makes people think about marriage and re-engage with the process. This is another way of doing it."

Radio's doomed first attempt

* The winners of the original contest in January 1999 were Greg Cordell, then 28, and model Carla Germaine, 23, who honeymooned in the Bahamas but moved out of their luxury canalside flat in Birmingham and returned to their previous lives three months later after Mr Cordell allegedly cheated with a dental nurse. Ms Germaine subsequently married television presenter Jeremy Kyle, who was working at BRMB when they met. Mr Cordell is now a recruitment consultant in Dubai.