Remember those school days where you would sit at home agonising over your French homework, just wishing there was an easier way to memorise all those new words? There are so many things that all of us tried in order to cram all that new vocabulary into our heads: post-it notes, flash cards, endless repetitions of the same "j'aime aller à la piscine" - it all just blurred into one wordy mess in the end.

At some point along the way, you may have heard someone - jokingly - tell you to sleep with your textbook under your pillow. That way, you'd "absorb" the language in your sleep.

Of course, that idea is ridiculous... but not completely impossible.

As some Swiss researchers have recently discovered, there is actually a way of teaching people a new language in their sleep. However, it's a little more sophisticated than simply sleeping on a book.

The team, led by Katharina Henke, Marc Züst, and Simon Ruch from the Bern Institute of Psychology, theorised that they could teach people new words by playing them while a subject was asleep. And they were correct! ... Sort of!

According to a summary of the study published in Current Biology, "Sleep-formed associations translated into awake ones" amongst the subjects of the test. In other words, things told to the volunteers while they were taking a nap had been stored in their brain in some capacity and could be accessed when they were awake.

However, it wasn't as if volunteers for the study came away speaking fluent French/Spanish/Klingon after one nap with a pair of headphones on.

In a paper published on the study, the researchers explained that what we understand about the way the sleeping brain functions is still fairly limited, and so it is impossible to fully understand how the brain learns while it is not fully conscious.

"Learning while asleep is a dream of mankind, but is often deemed impossible because sleep lacks the conscious awareness and neurochemical milieu thought to be necessary for learning," they said. "Current evidence for sleep learning in humans is inconclusive."

Still, that did not stop them from going ahead with the tests.

"To explore conditions under which verbal learning might occur, we hypothesized that peaks of slow waves would be conducive to verbal learning because the peaks define periods of neural excitability," they said.

Then, they went on to explain how exactly they set about teaching people a new (made up) language:

"While in slow-wave sleep during a nap, a series of word pairs comprising pseudowords, e.g., “tofer,” and actual German words, e.g., “Haus” (house), were played to young German-speaking women and men. When the presentation of the second word of a pair (e.g., “Haus” of “tofer-house”) coincided with an ongoing slow-wave peak, the chances increased that a new semantic association between the pair had been formed and retained.

"Sleep-formed associations translated into awake ones, where they guided forced choices on an implicit memory test. Reactivations of sleep-formed associations were mirrored by brain activation increases measured with fMRI in cortical language areas and the hippocampus, a brain structure critical for relational binding. We infer that implicit relational binding had occurred during peaks of slow oscillations, recruiting a hippocampal-neocortical network comparable to vocabulary learning in the waking state."

Basically, the scientists were able to teach people new words during a certain period of sleep, and - though the test subjects could not recall the exact definition of a word when awake - individuals involved in the experiment demonstrated that they were able to learn even when their brains were not fully conscious.

So, while we're not yet at the stage where we can take a powernap and wake up multi-lingual, we have discovered the basis for sleep-based learning, and that's an incredibly exciting prospect.

"Beer before wine and you'll feel fine."

These seven words are practically our mantra on a Saturday night out - but unfortunately for all of us who enjoy a tipple, it seems that it might not actually be true.

A recent study looked into whether the order of your drinks has an effect on the magnitude of your hangover. And, news flash: if you drink too much alcohol, you will be hungover no matter what.

While this revelation may seem obvious to some, to other drinkers who relied on the idea that if they played their cards right with the order of their alcoholic bevvies, they could avoid 24 hours of torture the next day, it's fairly devastating news.

The study saw researchers ply 90 volunteers with beer and white wine to order to settle the debate once and for all. Those who partook were aged 19 to 40 and were given a standardised meal tailored to their individual energy requirements, then split into three groups.

The first group drank about two and a half pints of lager followed by four large glasses of white wine. The second had the same drinks but in reverse order, while the third and final group had beer or wine up to the same breath alcohol concentration. Every volunteer drank up to 0.11 per cent, so they would have the same alcohol level in their systems.

Throughout the night, researchers monitored and quizzed the participants on how drunk they felt. Then, before bedtime, each person was given a glass of water, the size depending on their body weight.

After a night under medical supervision, they were asked to rate how awful their hangovers were and scored on the acute hangover scale, which takes into account factors including thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness.

The next morning was seemingly vomit-filled, with those who threw up the ones most likely to rate their hangover as severe. Urgh - we've all been there!

After a week to get over their headaches, the volunteers returned and did it all again. This time, however, the people who drank beer before wine on their first visit started on the wine, and vice versa. In addition, those who had drunk only beer were given wine and vice versa again.

The results, published Thursday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that there was no difference in the intensity of a hangover brought on by drinking wine first followed by beer, or the other way around.

Speaking about the study, Kai Hensel, a senior clinical fellow at Cambridge University, one of the researchers involved, confirmed that drink order had no effect on your sore head the next morning.

"Everyone knows the saying, “beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer," he said. "We thought there must be something in it, how can we test it? We debunked the saying, it’s not true. You’re going to be the same whatever order you drink these beverages in."

He made it clear, however, that the study only compared beer with white wine, and did not include red wine, spirits or dark beers.

"The truth is that drinking too much of any alcoholic drink is likely to result in a hangover," added Jöran Köchling, the first author on the study from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. "The only reliable way of predicting how miserable you’ll feel the next day is by how drunk you feel and whether you are sick. We should all pay attention to these red flags when drinking."

So, there you have it, folks. If you do the crime, you do the time! Gutted.

Nothing better than a beer, is there? Feeling sad? Have a beer. Feeling happy? Celebrate with a beer. Is it too hot? Have a beer. Is it freezing outside? Go and have a beer. Beer is a cure-all. Beer is comforting. Beer, above all else, is a friend. However, it does have its downside.

As one famous prophet once said: "To Alcohol! The cause and solution to all of life's problems!"

Yes, I know it's delicious. Yes, I know it's refreshing. And yes, I know it gets you hammered. But, beer - apparently - is not good for you.

Some people called beer "liquid bread," others call it "empty calories," but, to be fair to them, they do have science to back them up. While beer may give you a gut and give you a splitting headache, it does actually have some legitimate benefits to the male body.

Essentially, if you want to increase your fertility, get down to a pub and have a beer.

In a recent study published by researchers at the Policlinico hospital's fertility clinic in Milan, Italy, it was revealed that men who drink the equivalent of one beer a day produce more sperm than their non-drinking counterparts.

323 male patients were tested on with varying degrees of weekly alcohol intakes. 30 per cent of those tested, reported that they consumed around 1-3 drinks per week, 30 per cent reported having 4-7 drinks per week, and 30 per cent said that they have 8 or more drinks per week.

The men in the two groups that consumed more alcohol had "significantly higher sperm concentration" than those who had 1-3 weekly drinks. And, on top of this, men who had 4-7 weekly drinks also had a "significantly higher median semen volume" than those who had 1-3 weekly drinks.

However,  researchers also tested 39 men who reported that they drank 14 or more drinks per week, but "no statistically or clinically significant association was observed".

The results from the study also seemed to suggest that the antioxidants from grapes in wine, and a compound that is commonly found in beer hops called Xanthohumol, also help to protect sperms cells from damage.

So, while beer may not be beneficiary if you're on a diet and trying to shed some extra pounds, moderate alcohol content does appear to have a positive effect on the quality of a man's semen.

However, before you head out on the lash in order to boost your sperm count, Prof Allan Pacey, from the University of Sheffield, said: “It’s OK to have a glass of beer or wine with dinner but if you are trying for a baby a night on the lash should be avoided.”

Not only that, but Prof Simon Fishel, from CARE Fertility, said: “I would not use alcohol as a means to try to boost a low sperm count.”

So while beer may help boost your sperm count, it's important to remember that you should not go overboard. Still, though, it's enough of an excuse to have another pint, isn't it?

We'll drink to that!