Saturated Fat Could Kill Your Focus, Animals Have Regional Accents, and Rings Around Mars
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2020
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about how saturated fat can make it harder for you to focus; why it matters that animals have regional accents; and why Mars used to have rings.
A single meal high in saturated fat could make it harder to focus by Kelsey Donk
- Our ability to focus may falter after eating one meal high in saturated fat. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/osu-oat051220.php
- Madison, A. A., Belury, M. A., Andridge, R., Shrout, M. R., Renna, M. E., Malarkey, W. B., Bailey, M. T., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2020). Afternoon distraction: a high-saturated-fat meal and endotoxemia impact postmeal attention in a randomized crossover trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 111(6), 1150–1158. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqaa085
Many Animals Have Regional Accents by Samantha Suarez
- Whales With Caribbean Accents and Other Animal Dialects. (2016, February 27). Nationalgeographic.com. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/02/160227-animals-communication-sperm-whales-dialects-science/
- Geib, C. (2017, June 20). How Animals Develop Regional Accents. Atlas Obscura; Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/animal-accents-dialects
- Geggel, L. (2014, October 10). Killer Whales Learn How to Speak Dolphin. Livescience.com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/48231-killer-whales-talk-like-dolphins.html
- Kat Chow. (2013, December 30). Make It So: Sir Patrick Stewart Moos In Udder Accents. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/30/258393176/make-it-so-sir-patrick-stewart-moos-in-udder-accents
Four of the eight planets have rings. Mars used to be the fifth. by Cameron Duke
- Ćuk, M., Minton, D. A., Pouplin, J. L. L., & Wishard, C. (2020). Evidence for a Past Martian Ring from the Orbital Inclination of Deimos. ArXiv:2006.00645 [Astro-Ph]. https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.00645
- Hesselbrock, A. J., & Minton, D. A. (2017). An ongoing satellite–ring cycle of Mars and the origins of Phobos and Deimos. Nature Geoscience, 10(4), 266–269. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2916
- Williams, M. (2016, June 24). Which Planets Have Rings? Universe Today. https://www.universetoday.com/77109/which-planets-have-rings
- Martian Moon’s Orbit Hints at an Ancient Ring of Mars | SETI Institute. (2020). Seti.org. https://www.seti.org/press-release/martian-moons-orbit-hints-ancient-ring-mars
- Illustration Comparing Apparent Sizes of Moons. (2013). NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia17351.html#.XueL8mpKgl4
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Cody Goth. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about how saturated fat can make it harder for you to focus, why it matters that animals have regional accents, |
| 0:15.0 | and why Mars used to have rings. |
| 0:17.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:20.0 | We've all heard that saturated fat is unhealthy. |
| 0:23.4 | That's the kind of fat most often found in fried food, |
| 0:26.0 | processed meat, and baked goods. |
| 0:28.2 | It's bad for your heart, and it's bad for your waistline. |
| 0:31.1 | But what you may not know is that it's also bad for your brain. A new study found |
| 0:36.0 | that just a single meal, high and saturated fat, could make it harder to focus for the rest of |
| 0:41.7 | the day. Let's pause to acknowledge how wild that is. |
| 0:47.0 | Past research has focused on how saturated fats affect a person's ability to focus over time, but this study was about immediate results. Five hours |
| 0:56.3 | after the study participants ate a fatty meal meant to mimic a big mac and |
| 1:00.6 | medium fries, they still performed worse on an attention test. |
| 1:05.5 | That means one fast food lunch could make your attention lag for the rest of the day. |
| 1:11.0 | Here's how the researchers figured it out. |
| 1:13.0 | The study involved 51 women who took a morning trip to the lab to complete a 10-minute attention test. |
| 1:19.0 | Then they ate a decadent high-fat breakfast of eggs, turkey sausage, and |
| 1:23.7 | biscuits and gravy. |
| 1:25.1 | Half of the women ate a version of the meal that was cooked with an oil |
| 1:28.0 | high and saturated fat, and the other half ate one that was cooked |
... |
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