Short-Term Pleasures Are Important Too, the Smelly Armpit Enzyme, and a Thorne-Żytkow Object Is a Star Within a Star
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2020
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why short-term pleasures are important for your well-being; a Thorne-Żytkow Object, which is what astronomers call a star within a star; and how science identified the culprit for your smelly armpits: Staphylococcus hominis.
Short-term pleasures contribute to well-being just as much as self-control by Kelsey Donk
- Hedonism leads to happiness. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uoz-hlt072720.php
- Bernecker, K., & Becker, D. (2020). Beyond Self-Control: Mechanisms of Hedonic Goal Pursuit and Its Relevance for Well-Being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 014616722094199. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220941998
A Thorne-Żytkow Object Is a Star Within a Star by Ashley Hamer
- Levesque, E. M., Massey, P., Żytkow, A. N., & Morrell, N. (2014). Discovery of a Thorne–Żytkow object candidate in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 443(1), L94–L98. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slu080
- University of Colorado, & Observatory, L. (2014, June 9). The objects are hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars that superficially resemble normal red supergiants. Astronomy.Com. https://astronomy.com/news/2014/06/astronomers-discover-first-thorne-zytkow-object-a-bizarre-type-of-hybrid-star
- Charley, S. (2012, January 13). How to Make an Element. Pbs.org; Nova. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/make-an-element/
- Neutron Stars, Pulsars, and Magnetars - Introduction. (2017). Nasa.gov. https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1.html
Scientists have identified the enzyme responsible for smelly armpits by Grant Currin
- Life in the pits: Scientists identify the key enzyme behind BO. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uoy-lit072420.php
- Sample, I. (2020, July 27). Know sweat: scientists solve mystery behind body odour. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jul/27/know-sweat-scientists-solve-mystery-behind-body-odour
- Rudden, M., Herman, R., Rose, M., Bawdon, D., Cox, D. S., Dodson, E., Holden, M. T. G., Wilkinson, A. J., James, A. G., & Thomas, G. H. (2020). The molecular basis of thioalcohol production in human body odour. Scientific Reports, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68860-z
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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 |
| 0:05.0 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why |
| 0:09.4 | short-term pleasures are important for your well-being. what astronomers call a star within a star, |
| 0:15.2 | and how science found the culprit for your smelly armpits. |
| 0:18.9 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:21.2 | Goals require some sacrifice, right? I mean, the idea is that passing on short-term |
| 0:27.8 | pleasures in order to meet our long-term goals will make us happier, healthier, better people. |
| 0:35.0 | So the more self-control we have, |
| 0:36.9 | the more likely we'll be to get in shape, eat healthier, |
| 0:40.7 | and learn new skills. |
| 0:42.2 | And then, when we've met those goals will be better people, right? |
| 0:46.0 | Well, that's the popular opinion anyway, but according to new research, I'm sure you know where I'm going with this, we need to do some rethinking. This research suggests that short-term |
| 0:57.2 | pleasures contribute to well-being just as much as self-control. Great news for the mountain dew I had from the fridge earlier today. |
| 1:07.0 | Over the course of five studies, researchers from Switzerland and the Netherlands |
| 1:12.0 | measured how well-being was related to something they call |
| 1:15.6 | Hadonic capacity. Basically a person's ability to engage in and enjoy purely pleasurable activities. |
| 1:25.0 | It sounds like everybody would ace that test, right? |
| 1:28.0 | Well, but not so fast. |
| 1:30.0 | A good portion of people found it hard to enjoy pleasurable activities because they |
| 1:34.8 | couldn't stop thinking about the stuff they should be doing instead. |
| 1:38.0 | And the lower a person's hedonic capacity, the lower their well-being. |
| 1:44.4 | According to psychologists, those intrusive thoughts get in the way of giving your body rest and |
... |
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