Everybody knows what anxiety feels like - it’s annoying and counterproductive and apparently useless, so why does it exist? It turns out your anxiety isn’t useless at all - it’s a result of the sympathetic nervous system (in charge of the fight or flight response), which lets you respond immediately to threats and can also help you meet that looming deadline. But you don’t want your SNS running the whole show - chronic anxiety not only feels crappy, it damages your cells, alters your brain chemistry, and can exacerbate a wide range of health problems. Hank has the whole story in this episode of SciShow.
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References:
Oxidative Stress & Anxiety
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763246/
Depression & Chronic Stress Accelerates Aging
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109093729.htm
10 Stress-Related Health Problems You Can Fix
http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/features/10-fixable-stress-related-health-problems
Relationship Between Oxidative Stress and Anxiety: Emerging role of antioxidants within therapeutic or preventative approaches
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/17568/InTech-Relationship_between_oxidative_stress_and_anxiety_emerging_role_of_antioxidants_within_therapeutic_or_preventive_approaches.pdf
Top 5 Deadliest Substances on Earth
There are natural poisons that lurk in bacteria, plants, and fungi pretty much everywhere, and they’re there for good reasons (according to the organisms that produce them) - but what is it about their chemical make up that makes them so poisonous? How do their toxins attack the human body with such deadly efficiency? Discover the answers to these and other questions as Hank talks about some of the most deadly natural substances in the world.
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Weird Places: Blood Falls
In our continuing series on Earth’s weirdest places, Hank describes the crazy place in Antarctica known as Blood Falls in all its scientifically strange majesty.
IDTIMWYTIM: “ORGANIC”
In the world of chemistry, an “organic” compound is often described as anything with carbon in it, and “organic chemistry” is the study of carbon compounds, but there is actually no single definition of what “organic” means in chemistry, and scientists have been arguing about it for a long time. In this edition of “I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means,” Hank does his best to illuminate the confusion so we can better understand what “organic” means to chemists.
It’s pi day! Hank explains why this irrational number is important to scientists, and discusses a bit of a controversy that surrounds it.
Earlier today, mission specialists with NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory announced that they have found, for the first time, evidence of an ancient environment on Mars that could have sustained life. Hank tells us the specifics in this very special, super-exciting episode of SciShow News.
The Search for Antimatter
If you don’t have any idea what antimatter is, you don’t have to feel bad - the brightest minds in the world have only recently begun to understand what it is and how it works. Hank gives us the run down on what we know about antimatter, and what we’re still trying to figure out.
Badass Scientist of the Week: Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron (1815–1852), was a mathematician who is widely considered the founder of scientific computing. She was the daughter of Romantic poet Lord Byron and mathematician Anne Milbanke, whose brief marriage ended just a month after Ada was born—she never knew her father. Ada was raised by her mother, who encouraged her interest in mathematics and science, partly to prevent her from becoming a delinquent poet like her father. When she was seventeen, Ada met Charles Babbage, professor of mathematics at Cambridge and inventor of the Difference Engine, the first calculating machine. They began correspondences about mathematics, logic, and all manner of subjects. Two years later, Ada married William King and had three children, and became a Countess of Loveless when William inherited a noble title. In 1834, Babbage made plans for a new kind of calculating machine called an Analytical Engine, and in 1842, Italian mathematician Louis Menabrea published an article on the machine in French. Babbage enlisted Ada to translate it, a task she threw herself into with fervour—she translated the article over a nine-month period in 1842–43, adding extensive, enlightened notes of her own, which are the source of her enduring fame. Her notes show she understood the device’s potential better than Babbage, as they contained incredible visionary statements—she predicted, for example, that the Engine might act upon things other than numbers, such as composing elaborate scientific pieces of music. The idea that a machine could manipulate symbols according to laws, and that numbers could be used to represent things other than just quantities, marks the transition from calculation to computation. Ada took this mental leap, and she has been referred to as the ‘prophet of the computer age’ and an ‘Enchantress of Numbers’. She died young, cancer taking her at just 37, but her achievements as a mathematician and a woman live on in her legacy. In 1980, in honour of her contributions to computer science, the U.S. Department of Defence named its computer language ‘Ada.’
We have a “Great Minds” on Ada coming in April, but you can read this to get a little preview on this amazing lady.
Is There Gravity in Space?
In a word, “yes” - space is packed with gravity. Hank explains how Isaac Newton described how gravity works, and why even though it seems that things are floating in space, they’re still effected by gravity. Every object in the universe is constantly attracting every other object in the universe.
Richard Feynman, The Great Explainer
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Aside from being a great scientist and teacher, Richard Feynman was a kooky and curious guy who played the bongos, painted, and did math in strip clubs. Hank shares his Feynman love fest with us in this episode of SciShow: Great Minds.
