user: Brooke Hogan's Plan For How Her Dad Should Spend His $140 Mill

Brooke Hogan has a good idea about who should benefit most from her dad, Hulk Hogan's $140 million sex tape judgment.

We got Brooke at LAX Thursday, and she dropped some financial advice for the Hulkster ... if Gawker's appeal fails, and he ends up getting all that loot.

Watch Brooke's take ... even if she doesn't get any dough out of the deal, she's sure her father's court victory will benefit her in another, very valuable, way.

You're officially on notice, pervs.

summary: Brooke Hogan has a good idea about who should benefit most from her her dad, Hulk Hogan's $140 million sex tape judgment.

In a Bottle, the Scent of a Mouse

The chemical suspects generated by these microbes are two compounds called pyridines and another called 2-acetylpyrroline, the strongest-smelling of the three. This last one surprised me because it was an old acquaintance, an admirable compound that I would never have thought capable of causing trouble. I think of it as the basmati molecule. It’s the chemical whose aroma distinguishes Himalayan basmati rices, Thai jasmine rice and other aromatic rices from all the rest. The name “basmati” comes from the Urdu for “fragrant,” not “mousy.”

The same molecule is generated from the amino acid proline during cooking, and makes a positive, toasty contribution to the flavors of popcorn, bread and many other foods. You can create it yourself by buying some proline from a health-food store, mixing the contents of a capsule in a small bowl with a similar portion of sugar and a spoonful of water, and then microwaving the bowl for 10 seconds at a time, sniffing after each zap. The basmati note develops as the solution gets thick and sticky, then disappears when it turns brown.

Can an aroma so good in food really turn so bad in wine? That was the question I tried to answer by making rice wines. The rice was the aged grade of the Kohinoor brand. For geographic appropriateness, the wines were a dry sauvignon blanc and an off-dry chenin blanc from the Sula winery near Mumbai.

I soaked a couple of spoonfuls of rice in a cup of each wine for four hours, then compared the infused wines with the originals. The rice versions tasted different, but not at all in the direction of my friend Billy’s mouse cage. The dry wine lost some of its edge and length, while the chenin blanc seemed richer, less simply sweet. So maybe the basmati molecule needs more time to go bad, or maybe it only gets that way when it hangs out with the wrong chemical company, the pyridines.

After this crude and inconclusive experiment, I went ahead with the obvious test. I cooked some of the basmati rice and had it along with the wines, alert to any hint of the cage as I ate and drank. Childhood stayed put. The combination of basmati and wine may be a problem in the winery, but it works fine at the table.

summary: Why do wines sometimes have an off-flavor reminiscent of a rodent’s cage?

Record number of calls placed to Lifeline

Not everyone has something to celebrate during the festive season, with Lifeline Australia expecting a record year of calls for help.

The national charity's 3500 crisis support volunteers have already received more than 920,000 calls so far this year.

Chief executive Pete Shmigel said the sheer number of people reaching out for help demonstrated the need for a national summit on suicide to come up with a prevention plan.

Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the nation's suicide rate is at a 10-year high, climbing above 3000 for the first time in 2015.

"While we can say we save the lives of some 100 Aussies every day, no one wants 3000 lives lost each year to be the new tragic benchmark for suicide in Australia," Mr Shmigel said.

He said despite Lifeline Australia's record answer rate of 86 per cent, the charity is unable to answer every call immediately due to a lack of resources.

"My message to those people is to please stay on the line or try calling again later - you will get through," he said.

"I also encourage the community to look out for colleagues, friends and loved ones who may be doing it tough over the Christmas and New Year's period."

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.

MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78.

Multicultural Mental Health Australia www.mmha.org.au.

summary: Lifeline Australia is expecting a record number of calls to its crisis line by the end of 2016.

Live Twitter chat: Do online brain games work?

How does memory work, and what can we do to make it and other processes in our brains work better? Do online brain games, a multimillion dollar industry that claims to make our brains faster and our memories sharper, actually work?

Functional MRI brain scans show how searching the Internet dramatically engages brain neural networks (in red) in volunteers with prior Internet search experience. The right scan was taken while searching Google. The left while reading.

Functional MRI brain scans show how searching the Internet dramatically engages brain neural networks (in red) in volunteers with prior Internet search experience. The right scan was taken while searching Google. The left while reading.

Richard Restak, a clinical professor of neurology at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, will answer those questions and talk about the connections between memory, brain development and gaming — based on today's column "Gaming the brain" by Board of Contributors member Ted C. Fishman — during a live Twitter chat at 3 p.m. ET today.

See the live Twitter chat below.

To send questions or comments, use #brainchat.

In addition to being a professor at George Washington University, Restak maintains a private practice in neurology and neuropsychiatry in Washington D.C., and holds memberships in several professional societies.

He was elected to a fellowship in the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neuropsychiatric Association and was president of the American Neuropsychiatric Association from 2005 to 2007.

Restak has written more than 18 books on the human brain and has written articles for national newspapers including The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and USA TODAY.

He has also contributed brain and neuroscience-related entries for the World Book Encyclopedia, the Campton's Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience.

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summary:

assistant: How does memory work, and what can we do to make that and other processes in our brains work better? Do online brain games actually work?