Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

Heavy Metal Please note that you do not have quite enough metal trees. Metal trees are extremely hard to come by outside of Metallica, unless you create them yourselves, but they are worth the effort. I believe Muse HQ is in danger of being overrun by hot pink bunnies (HPBs), and metal trees from Metallica can help with that as they ward away bunnies of all kinds. If you would like any, I would be happy to send instructions. —HER MAJESTY THE GREAT AND REVERED MAGNIFICENT DRAGON QUEEN OF METALLICA P.S. If you do not publish this letter, I will send the whole entire army of the wondrous country of Metallica, which is made of anything and everything metallic. Also, my army will lay siege to Muse HQ, so my…

While the village sleeps, Dr. Anna Nekaris and her crew trek up a steep mountainside. All is dark except for the faint luster of moonlight and the red light from their headlamps. As they hike higher over rugged terrain, rain falls softly, making this a slick and dangerous trip. The radio receiver tock, tock, tocks. They know Azka, a slow loris, is nearby. The Venomous Primate Nekaris, a scientist and professor at Oxford Brookes University in England, studies slow lorises in South and Southeast Asia. She wants to learn more about these nocturnal animals. Her study site is on the slope of a mountain on the island of Java in Indonesia. Lorises are one of only four known groups of venomous mammals in the world. “They are primates like we…

Jack Dumbacher was in the middle of the rain forest in Papua New Guinea when he suddenly knew something was wrong. His mouth tingled and burned, like he’d licked a nine-volt battery—“a weird, metallic sensation not at all pleasant,” he says. It made Dumbacher uneasy, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do. More than a Coincidence Just a few minutes earlier, he had been tending to the mist nets—a kind of hard-to-spot netting used by scientists to catch birds. Two hooded pitohuis, about the size of blue jays, had gotten snagged in the net he was using to catch the raggiana birds of paradise for his advisor, ornithologist Dr. Bruce Beehler. The angry birds had clawed and pecked at Dumbacher’s hands while he gently freed them, leaving him with…

Cancer happens when a normal process in the body goes wrong. Our bodies are made up of hundreds of thousands of cells, the building blocks of each of our tissues and organs. Normally, cells in the body divide and replicate to allow the body to grow and repair itself. Sometimes, one of these cells makes a mistake that goes unnoticed by the body’s immune system. The abnormal cell starts to divide uncontrollably and forms a cancer. O’Neill treats patients and performs research with the goal to improve both the detection and treatment of pediatric cancers. Q Why did you want to become a pediatrician? And why study cancer? A Growing up, I always had an exquisite interest in science. I reasoned that the best way to apply my interest in…

Eating even a couple berries of the nightshade Atropa belladonna can be deadly. The berries and leaves contain tropane alkaloids, poisons that protect the plant from hungry animals. Poison or no, ladies in the medieval courts in Italy used extracts made from nightshade as a beauty aid. A few drops in the eyes dilated the pupils, leading to a wide-eyed, dreamy stare that was fashionable at the time. That may explain why this plant is commonly called belladonna—that’s “beautiful lady” in Italian. Of course, there was a downside to the drug. It could blind women who regularly applied it to their eyes. When ingested or used on the skin in an ointment, the drug caused hallucinations—wild visions and a sense of flying. That may be the origin of a tale…

You’re helping to organize a fundraiser at school, and you have seven volunteers who will work together in groups of three in seven time slots. You want to schedule the volunteers so you have seven groupings, while making sure that no pair of students works together more than once (so that no one gets too cliquey). Can you come up with such an arrangement? Grab a pencil and paper and try it before reading on. Suppose your volunteers are Andre, Bill, Charlotte, Dan, Emma, Flo, and Gavin. You could organize them into teams as follows, with each person working in three time slots: Andre, Bill, CharlotteAndre, Dan, EmmaAndre, Flo, GavinBill, Dan, FloBill, Emma, GavinCharlotte, Dan, GavinCharlotte, Emma, Flo With this arrangement, the volunteers share the work equally, and no cliques…

I SLITHER onto rocksss. I bask in the sssun. I’ve got thisss awesssome rattle. (Rattle rattle rattle.) Life’sss great. OK. Well. Yeah. All right. I’m lonely. Nobody sssseems to want to be my friend. Sssigh. Wait. What was that??!!! Did you sssee that?! Oh. My. Gosh. YESSSSS—the mossst funnessst new friend ever jussst miraculousssly hopped by. What colorssss! The redsss—the bluesss! The ssslimy sssssskin! And the way he leapt away when he sssaw me! He must like to play tag! Fun fun FUN. Oh! There he isssbounding away. I shall ssslither! OH—we are bessst friendssssss! He hasss found a hiding place. I am going to surprisssssse him! Oh heavensss. OH. HEAVENSSSS. Not again. I have just eaten my new bessst friend. Darn these fangsss. Wait. What isss happening to me!?…

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR Elephants Use Trunks like Leaf Blowers WHEN AN elephant wants something that’s out of reach, it may use its head—and then its trunk. Two elephants in a Japanese zoo use air from their trunks to blow objects closer to themselves. The Asian elephants live in an enclosure that’s surrounded by a ditch to keep them from getting out. Researchers tested the elephants by dropping snacks into the ditch, just out of reach of the elephants. They dropped leaves, pieces of bamboo, apples, potatoes, and hay. The elephants weren’t stumped. To get a snack, an elephant went to the edge of the ditch, leaned out, and used its trunk to blast air on the far side of the object. A few huffs and puffs later, the snack had slid…

Kyle raised bunnies to show at the state fair. He named them and enjoyed playing with them. After the fair, he butchered them to make rabbit stew. Was Kyle’s behavior morally wrong? Whatever your answer, you probably think you used logic to decide. But science says you used your gut—literally. Just like spoiled food, cruelty makes people feel queasy. Around the world, in languages as different as French and Farsi, people call immoral behavior “disgusting” and “sickening.” That choice of words isn’t just coincidence. Unethical behavior and contaminated food both activate the brain region linked to disgust. That overlap produces some strange consequences. Bad behavior makes people feel unclean: many cultures link immoral behavior to contamination. Cheating, stealing, or taking bribes “gets your hands dirty.” Honest people have a “clean…

Dear Augustine, How are you feeling? I do hope this letter finds you better than when I left. I’m so sorry that I laughed when that awful witch turned you into a frog! But I will make up for it. The Supreme Master Wizard has taken me on as an apprentice. I know I can find a cure for your condition among his magic potions. In the meantime, try not to eat too many flies. They can’t be healthy. Love always, Phinia My Darling Augustine, I have learned so much in one week! Most important, there are two different kinds of mixtures. In the simplest potions, you can see all the different ingredients. You could separate them with a filter or sieve and use them again later. I’ve enclosed a…