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It seems fitting to start this week by looking into the science of fear by starting where the fear begins - the brain.⠀
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😰 Fear starts in the amygdala. It's the amygdala's job to notice things in our environment. When it detects something it perceives as a threat, it prepares other parts of the brain to react. It triggers a cascade of physical responses too. You see and hear more clearly. Your heart rate and breathing quicken to prepare your body for flight-or-fight.⠀
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The hippocampus wakes up and teams up with the pre-frontal cortex to decide if the threat needs to be taken seriously. Together they evaluate the danger in the context of the situation to see if a fear response is warranted. If you saw a gorilla coming at you on the street, you would probably be terrified. However, put that same gorilla in a habitat in a zoo, and she isn't so scary. 🦍⠀
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If a threat is determined as genuine, the amygdala is allowed to keep going unfettered. However, if the danger isn't determined to be real, the amygdala is told to shut down operations, and we begin to calm down. ⠀
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There is an in-between real and unreal perceived threats. When a threat is perceived as real but not quite accurate enough, the amygdala is told to just dial it back a notch or two. This lessens the fear response in the rest of the brain, but it is still there. We are still just a little scared. Scary movies, anyone? 🎞⠀
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The amygdala also tells the hypothalamus to tell the pituitary gland to release hormones, but more on this in the hormone edition later in the week. 📅⠀
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People always talk about fight-or-flight, but you never hear them talk about the other "f" - freeze. Some people, and other animals, freeze when they perceive a threat. This happens because an area of the brain known as the periaqueductal gray (PAG) receives sensory information about the danger. At the same time, the cerebellum is receiving this same information to coordinate body movements. When there is "cross-talk" between these two areas of the brain, a person will end up freezing when up against a scary situation. 😳⠀
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Tomorrow we look at neurotransmitters involved in the fear response!

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🧬 James D. Watson, along with Francis Crick, discovered the double-helix model of DNA. They had help along the way. Linus Pauling's work with nucleic acid and his proposed triple helix model of DNA nucleic acids, Maurice Wilkins' work in DNA crystallography, and his research assistant Rosalind Franklin's first X-Ray of the double helix structure of DNA gave Watson and Crick the blueprints for their model.⁠
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🏅 Watson, Crick, and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson wanted Franklin, who had died of cancer in 1958, to get a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but at the time, the Nobel Committee did not give prizes posthumously. ⁠
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🖼️ Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain

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Marie Curie is a hero among women in science for many reasons:

🏅She was awarded a Nobel in 1903, the first woman to do so.
👩🏻‍🏫 She was the first woman to become a professor, and chair of physics, at University of Paris. The job was offered to her after he husband, was suddenly killed in an accident.
🧪 Became head of the Radium institute after the University of Paris refused to give her a proper lab.
☢️ Isolated radium, the first person to do so. She also discovered polonium.
🏅🏅Won a second Nobel Prize in 1911. The only woman to win two Nobel Prizes. This also made her the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields.
💀During World War I developed mobile X-ray units for the front line wounded they were nicknamed petites Curies.
🚑 Named director of Red Cross Radiology Service during World War I.

This is just some of the notable things she accomplished in her scientific career. She did all this in the face of xenophobia and under rumors of elicit affairs.

Who is your favorite female scientist? Let us know.
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While on a road trip yesterday, we saw something we thought was amazing. 🤗

Albinism occurs in plants too! This Texas Bluebonnet (sp. Lupinus texensis) and Indian Paintbrush (sp. Castilleja indivisa) are naturally occurring albino phenotypes. Since it is only in the flowering part of the plants, and the green parts of the plants still have pigment, this form of albinism is known as albiflora.

Albinism presents as a absent of surface pigments. In humans this is a loss of melanin, but in plants this is an absence of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the place of the light reaction portion photosynthesis, so albinism in plants can interfere with photosynthesis.

As in humans, albinism is a heterozygous recessive condition. This means both the male gamete (pollen) and the female gamete (egg) have to carry the allele for albinism.

Have you seen albinism in nature? Share it with us!

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Head over to YouTube for my friend and fellow online tutor JPez's talk about college debt! It's a great video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rrsDnVlO_s

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This week our blog features our kick of to our free Amplify Your Time Management workshop.

Start by tracking where your time is spent. We can’t begin to reign it in before we analyze where it is going off the rails.

I am going to be doing this with you. So I set up an email just for this workshop. If you have any questions or just want to chat about some of your time management challenges you can email me at the new email 👆

Did I mention I would be doing this with you?! Look for my tracker in our stories next Saturday !

After reading this week’s post, share your time trackers with us by using