Curiosity Daily Podcast: Using Lava Lamps to Generate Randomness (w/ Matt Parker), How Ritalin Makes You Focus, and What Bacteria Beneath the Sea Floor Means for Life on Mars
Learn about how drugs like Ritalin and Adderall actually make you “focus,” how tech companies are using lava lamps to make computers more secure, and why new life discovered at the bottom of the ocean opens up new possibilities for finding life on Mars.
April 27, 2020
Episode Show Notes:
Scientists figured out how Ritalin actually makes you focus by Grant Currin
- Ritalin and similar medications cause brain to focus on benefits of work, not costs. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/bu-ras031820.php
- Westbrook, A., van den Bosch, R., Määttä, J. I., Hofmans, L., Papadopetraki, D., Cools, R., & Frank, M. J. (2020). Dopamine promotes cognitive effort by biasing the benefits versus costs of cognitive work. Science, 367(6484), 1362–1366. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz5891
Additional resources from Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician:
- Pick up “Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World” on Amazon https://amzn.to/3c3xwi9
- Matt Parker’s official website http://standupmaths.com/
- Subscribe to Matt Parker’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/standupmaths
- Follow @standupmaths on Twitter https://twitter.com/standupmaths
- Liebow-Feeser, J. (2017, November 6). LavaRand in Production: The Nitty-Gritty Technical Details. The Cloudflare Blog; The Cloudflare Blog. https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/
- Scott, T. (2020). The Lava Lamps That Help Keep The Internet Secure [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cUUfMeOijg
- US5732138A - Method for seeding a pseudo-random number generator with a cryptographic hash of a digitization of a chaotic system - Google Patents. (1996, January 29). Google.com. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5732138
Researchers discover bacteria living in rock beneath the sea floor (which is good news for life on Mars) by Cameron Duke
- Discovery of life in solid rock deep beneath sea may inspire new search for life on Mars. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/uot-dol033020.php
- Suzuki, Y., Yamashita, S., Kouduka, M., Ao, Y., Mukai, H., Mitsunobu, S., Kagi, H., D’Hondt, S., Inagaki, F., Morono, Y., Hoshino, T., Tomioka, N., & Ito, M. (2020). Deep microbial proliferation at the basalt interface in 33.5–104 million-year-old oceanic crust. Communications Biology, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-0860-1
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Next Up
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Big Brain Bestfriends, Mars Exploration Fleet, Brain Unpain
Discover how our brains physically reflect how social we are, a new proposal for Mars exploration vehicles, and patterns in our brain that reveal how we process pain!
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Skin Print, Testing Birth Control, Race To Bring Mars Home
You’re going to learn about efforts to print astronaut skin in space with their own blood, the mystifying side effects of birth control, and the race to bring soil samples back from Mars!
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Mars Opportunity Rover Update, Sunscreen SPF Meanings, Turning Carbon Dioxide into Fuel
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Curiosity Daily Podcast: NASA's InSight Lander Mars Mission, the Chicken or the Egg, and Common Synesthesia
Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you learn something new in just a few minutes:
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Water Detected on Mars, A Lost Arizona Goldmine, and Zeigarnik Effect Memory Sharpening
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Curiosity Daily Podcast: International Internet Languages (w/ Gretchen McCulloch), Chances of Rain, and Mars in Spain
Learn about how you can go on a simulated mission to Mars (in Spain); and, what the weather forecast really means when it says there’s a chance of rain. You’ll also learn about how people around the world talk differently online, with internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch.
Curiosity Daily Podcast: The Habitable Epoch, Mars 2020’s Search for Life, and 4 Research-Based Personality Types
Learn about why the universe may have been teeming with life billions of years ago; why NASA’s Mars 2020 Martian rover mission is going to be a huge milestone; and four personality types people fit into, according to new research.
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Saturated Fat Could Kill Your Focus, Animals Have Regional Accents, and Rings Around Mars
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.
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Game Transfer Phenomena (w/ Angelica Ortiz de Gortari) and the Methane Spike on Mars
Learn how a newly detected methane spike on Mars may change our understanding of the red planet; and how you can participate in a new research study on game transfer phenomena, with researcher Angelica Ortiz de Gortari.
Curiosity Daily Podcast: Exercising for Different Body Types, New England Vampire Panic, Non-Vertical List Benefits, and Constellations on Mars
Learn about how your body type affects the way you should exercise; the New England Vampire Panic; what our constellations would look like if we saw them from Mars; and the benefits of writing a better, non-vertical list to organize your thoughts.