tyciol

Questions should only be asked regarding RNA origins since it's accepted evolutionary theory that they preceded DNA. I believe they can encode proteins too, and those proteins would have encoded the first DNA.

The brain is chemically composed to alterations in it's chemistry should effect changes (positive or negative) in intelligence, memory, thinking speed, etc. It's a shady field of study but I don't think it's right to say there would be no effect. I didn't know that creatine could have nootropic advantages, I had mostly only heard of it's athletic ones, definately a reason to try it out I guess. I know exercise has been shown to be beneficial for the mind too, so I think that could partially explain any advantages it provides, but there could be direct ones too. The problem with caffeine is that while it does greatly increase focus and energy, the wiki entry I read on it said some studies showed it to decrease memory encoding. Which means it's perfect to take for when you write a test, but not necessarily when studying for one. It can help you get through the study session or keep you up when you are tired, but if comparing an equivilent amount of time it may be a less effective use of study time. Of course, studying prior to a test can be more effective in some cases, especially for memorization of terms, so caffeine's aid in doing that should be taken into account, and I'm not sure if the study did that. It's just more a sense of, even if it lets you pass that test, would the knowledge you demonstrated in it stick around or would it simply be in your temporary memory to be lost? It sort of seems that way when burning the candle with coffee for an exam.

While it's semantics and they have always seemed to cover the same area, maybe the words have something to do with it. 'Molecular biology' could study the molecular composition of biology, whereas 'biochemistry' could study how those molecules interact? Though really you need each to study the other usually.