Self Shadowing Particles + Smoke driven particles

Hi,haven’t messed around with sims in blender yet,but i was wondering if blender has the ability to have particles cast shadows on themselves.I’m aware you could use a tiny spheres as an instance,but i’m talking about having the particles do that themselves.I think software such as houdini and xsi have this ability.

also, is it possible in blender to you use a smoke fluid container system to drive particles? (advection)

example :

thanks in advance

NG

hmmm anyone?