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.
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
A Thorne-Żytkow Object Is a Star Within a Star by Ashley Hamer
Scientists have identified the enzyme responsible for smelly armpits by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/short-term-pleasures-are-important-too-the-smelly-armpit-enzyme-and-a-thorne-zytkow-object-is-a-star-within-a-star
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why short-term pleasures are important for your well-being; what astronomers call a Star Within a Star; and how science found the culprit for your smelly armpits.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Goals require some sacrifice. The idea is that passing on short-term pleasures in order to meet our long-term goals will make us happier, healthier, better people. So the more self-control we have, the more likely we’ll be to get in shape, eat healthier, and learn new skills. Then, when we’ve met those goals, we’ll be better people! That’s the popular opinion, anyway. But according to new research, we need to do some rethinking. This research suggests that short-term pleasures contribute to well-being just as much as self-control.
Over five studies, researchers from Switzerland and the Netherlands measured how well-being was related to something they called hedonic capacity: basically, a person’s ability to engage in and enjoy purely pleasurable activities. Sounds like everybody would ace that test, right? Not so fast. A good portion of people found it hard to enjoy pleasurable activities because they couldn’t stop thinking about the stuff they should be doing instead. And the lower a person’s hedonic capacity, the lower their well-being.
According to psychologists, those intrusive thoughts get in the way of giving your body rest and relaxation — you know, stuff it actually needs to function. People who don’t have those kinds of intrusive thoughts, and can relax on the couch in the middle of the day without stressing about it? They’re less likely to have depression or anxiety and tend to enjoy greater overall well-being. And that’s not just in the short-term, but in the long-term too.
So what’s a goal-oriented person to do? Well, the solution isn’t to just give in to everyday pleasures and forget about having goals. Both are important to living a full, healthy life. But the researchers suggest consciously planning time for both. If the pleasure is scheduled, you may be able to more fully enjoy it.
That’s become especially important now that many people are working from home. The office is now the same as the bedroom, the dining room, or the living room. And that can make it hard to leave thoughts of work behind when you’re trying to relax at night. While scientists haven’t found a failsafe fix to this problem, the study authors think it’s a good idea to set time boundaries for work and play in order to keep them separate.
But don’t skimp on the good things in life. After all, they’re what make life worth living.
There's some seriously weird stuff in the universe. One of the weirdest, if you ask me, is what’s known as a Thorne-Żytkow object [SZHIT-kov, first consonant like the French “je”], or TZO for short. It’s a star inside another star. And this isn’t just some theoretical idea, either. Astronomers have actually detected one. Here’s the inside scoop on this turducken of the stars.
Stars are basically element factories: their cores fuse hydrogen atoms into helium, helium into beryllium, and so on down the periodic table until they get to iron. When a moderately-sized star runs out of hydrogen, it starts to expand into what’s called a red supergiant. But when a really massive star works through all the elements until it starts fusing iron, its core caves in on itself. Then, the entire thing explodes in a giant supernova, leaving behind a super-dense object called a neutron star. So, to sum up: a medium-sized star near the end of its life: red supergiant. A super-dense star leftover from a huge star explosion: neutron star.
The prevailing theory of how a TZO forms is that a red supergiant star essentially swallows a tiny neutron star, which spirals into the center of the larger star and makes a home in its core. Wild, right? But scientists can't identify a TZO by just looking at it. Instead, they use their knowledge of the elements within the object to detect each one with its unique light spectrum.
See, the elements created by a garden-variety red supergiant are predictable. But when a red supergiant has a neutron star in its core, those elements change a little bit. Specifically, the researchers who discovered the first TZO noticed that its particular light spectrum pointed to excess amounts of rubidium, lithium, and molybdenum [muh-LIB-duh-num]. That’s pretty close to what physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Żytkow [SZHIT-kov] predicted when they theorized the existence of Thorne-Żytkow objects in 1975.
It just goes to show that if you can imagine it, somewhere out there in the universe, it probably exists.
Scientists have sniffed out some of the molecular machinery behind body odor and they’ve discovered the enzyme responsible. This little molecule is what one species of bacteria uses to make your sweat stink. Get ready to learn about the BO enzyme.
Pretty much every part of the body — including the armpits — is home to its own complex community of bacteria called a microbiome. But just a handful of those bacteria are responsible for producing the chemical compounds that we know as body odor. Those chemicals belong to a smelly class called thioalcohols, and microbes produce them after chowing down on other compounds found on your skin.
Yeah, they’re basically bacteria farts.
One species in particular appears responsible for the smells. It’s called Staphylococcus hominis, and it takes an odorless compound found in underarm sweat and turns it into one specific, very stinky thioalcohol.
When the researchers looked closely at that chemical transformation, they found that one specific enzyme is responsible for the malodorous makeover. The researchers double-checked their conclusion by inserting the enzyme into a species of bacteria that’s related to S. hominis but that doesn’t ordinarily produce smelly thioalcohols. After chowing down on some sweat molecules, the bacteria produced a stench that gave the researchers the, uh, confirmation they needed.
The research offers insight into the past and may chart a course to a brighter, better-smelling future. The researchers were able to figure out that S. hominis has been carrying the BO enzyme around for about 60 million years. That’s way before modern humans came onto the scene. That means the stink may have played an important role in social communications among our ancestors. It may have even influenced aspects of our own evolution.
But just because it was important in our past doesn’t mean body odor has to be part of humanity’s future. The scientists behind this work hope that identifying the underlying biochemistry might help engineers develop deodorants that specifically target the bacteria responsible for body odor. Those products might last longer and cause less collateral damage to the vast majority of microbes that are just hanging out, minding their own business, and maybe even helping their human hosts. Here’s to a less stinky future.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer, Kelsey Donk, & Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough, Sonja Hodgen, and Natalia Reagan. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!