Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LAND ANIMALS also its shortest sleepers? A study of wild African elephants suggests that may be the case. Researchers tracked down two female elephants in a park in Botswana and gave them GPS collars. They also temporarily implanted an activity tracker (similar to a FitBit) in each elephant’s trunk. Elephants constantly wave and wiggle their trunks while they’re awake. So by recording when the elephants’ trunks were still, the scientists could measure how much they slept. Over the next month, the two elephants averaged only two hours of sleep per night. That’s less than any other mammal that scientists have studied. They usually slept standing up, not lying down. And the scientists were surprised to see that each elephant pulled a few all-nighters. Th ey might…

IT’S A GOOD THING Neanderthals didn’t floss. Scientists found some intriguing hints about what these prehistoric toric people ate by studying their tooth gunk. Researchers sampled plaque—the stuff the dental hygienist scrapes off your teeth—from Neanderthal remains. (Neanderthals were ancient cousins to humans.) Then they sequenced the DNA in that plaque to learn what those people might have been eating. In the mouth of a Neanderthal from Belgium, they found woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep DNA. But a Neanderthal from Spain had been eating veggies, not meat. This person’s plaque included DNA from pine nuts, moss, and mushrooms. There was also evidence that the prehistoric people used medicines. One Neanderthal had a tooth infection. In that person’s plaque, the scientists found DNA from the poplar tree—a natural painkiller—and an antibiotic…

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is unlikely to bore you or himself. He studies and writes about people and technology—fascinating stuff. Sometimes he’s researching, lecturing, and teaching on these topics at Stanford University in California, where he is a visiting scholar. Pang also runs a company that teaches others how to be less busy, but get more done; how to rest more, yet be more creative. But Pang’s dogs think his job is to take them for walks. Pang is also a futurist. In a way, futurists are like weather forecasters. Both predict the future, but neither needs a magic crystal ball. Weather forecasters look at what has been happening in the weather to predict what’ll happen next. Futurists do something similar for people. They look at what people have done in…

Q: Is it possible to die of boredom? —Jerry A., 14, Virginia A: To figure out if we can die of boredom, we first have to understand what boredom is. For help, I called James Danckert, a psychologist who studies boredom at the University of Waterloo in Canada. “A lot of people think about being bored as being a couch potato or being lazy. And it’s absolutely not that,” he says. “[Bored people] want to be engaged with their world, they want to do something satisfying and stimulating. But any attempt to do so is failing.” Th at means boredom is usually very frustrating. And it can have physical consequences. In one of his experiments, Danckert made people mind-numbingly bored by showing them a video of two people hanging laundry…

a. Johanna Arnone (Muse Editor) b. Matthew Billington (Your Tech Illustrator) c. Greg Kletsel (Last Slice Illustrator) d. Nikki Welch (Muse Art Director) e. Daniel Guidera (Q&A Illustrator) f. Kevin Cuasay (Muse Designer) How many did you get right? 5–6: Sketch Sherlock–You’re a real sleuth! If a burglar ever leaves doodles at the scene of a crime, the police will be calling on you to figure out who did it. 3–4: Dandy Doodler–You’ve got a great eye for artistic talent (or lack of talent) in others. 0–2: Mild Muser–Better luck next time! And anyway, we bet you could churn out some doodles as good (or better) than these.…

Avolcanologist, a marine biologist, and an ornithologist walk into your corner café. From where you sit—the comfy couch, of course—you can almost hear their drink orders. You wonder if they’re tea people or coffee hounds. When they meet up with some friends and take the table behind you, you can easily hear them discussing their fieldwork: on site at Mount St. Helens, at the shrinking Great Salt Lake, or in Lower Athabasca, Alberta. Then one of them mentions sometimes being a bit bored. The others chime in. You’re curious: what do scientists do during their downtime in the field? Snail Numbering Kay Behrensmeyer, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian, mentions one trip to Pakistan where it rained nearly an entire week. Now that could be dull! However, she and…

Reading, Writing, and Ravenclaw I’ve only gotten four issues so far, but I think Muse is amazing! I got hooked when I found it in my teacher’s class library. I also noticed that she kept giving us articles from Muse for Nonfiction Reading. (I now have subscriptions to three mags but yours is the best.) Enough of that. Cate, I love to write and I am writing a story but can’t think of names for my characters. Can I use your name? Pleeeease? You’re my favorite muse (no offense) because of your glasses—I have glasses too but they’re not nearly as cool as yours—hair, outfit, and time travel ability. Also, you seem kind of nice and so does everyone else. Anyways, O, why is your name just O? Whatsi, cyborgs…

Bore. Bored. Boredom. Are there any words in the English language duller than these? They’re so empty. They’re so nothing. Except, according to scientists, boredom actually is something—something important. Just like sadness and anger and joy, boredom is an emotion. It’s a feeling that relates to your mood, or the things happening around you, or even the people you’re hanging out with. And like all our emotions, boredom has a purpose. That purpose isn’t always positive. Then again, neither was the anger you felt when your little brother “borrowed” the popsicle you were saving to eat after dinner, and you wanted to sock him in the nose. Sometimes, though, boredom can be your friend. » GOOD & BORED OK, boredom might not seem like your friend when you’re forced to…

The cheetah slinks through tall grass, stalking the tasty gazelle on the horizon. The elephant rips at a baobab tree with its tusks, searching for the water stored inside. The beaver piles logs to build a dam and packs them down with mud. In the wild, animals spend much of their time simply surviving: finding food, sourcing water, building homes, or staying away from predators. In a zoo, however, the animals don’t have to worry about many of these activities. Zookeepers deliver dinner, fill up the water troughs, and make sure the animals have safe, secure enclosures. So what’s an animal to do? Stuck in a Rut Think about when you have nothing to do and no way to keep yourself busy. Sometimes you get so bored, you want to…

YOU’RE SITTING in class with a notebook and pen, listening to a lecture about ancient history. Most likely, the country’s capital and other important facts aren’t the only thing on that paper at the end of class. There might be lines, shapes, and comments in the margin. Or maybe your notes look more like the picture above. Most people doodle occasionally. Yet doodling is frowned upon in certain situations, such as classes and business meetings. People find the behavior annoying or rude—the doodler must not be paying attention, they think. But some scientists and educators beg to differ. Studies have shown that doodling can actually help people retain information. It also seems to boost creativity and encourage empathy. Doodling is an important tool that can help us understand our own…

Roxie Munro loves art. She is always busy creating different types of art. She draws and paints oil and watercolor works that hang in galleries, homes, and museums. She illustrates many, many children’s books. And she creates fun apps for phones and tablets, such as “Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure.” Munro recently published Masterpiece Mix, a book about art. It focuses on how and where famous artists get their creativity. Turns out Munro is also a keen doodler. Muse chatted with her about doodling and how it helps with her artistic process. WHEN DO YOU DOODLE, AND WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO CREATE? I doodle CONSTANTLY. I fill at least 20 Post-it sheets a day, plus several others on a small clipboard with scratch paper. I doodle mainly while on the…

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP Have you ever watched a tiny droplet of water just hanging on the end a faucet and waited to see when the drop would fall? In a laboratory at the University of Queensland in Australia, researchers have been doing something a lot like that—for almost a hundred years. In the world’s longest-running experiment, drops of tar pitch are dripping from a beaker. Except pitch is so thick and sticky that it can take 13 years for a single drop to drip off! Until then, it just hangs there. Can you imagine watching anything more monotonous? Not only that, but if you turn your head for a moment, you might miss it! (This actually happened back in 1988.) OK, they do have video backup now, and it’s even…

ANASA spacecraft called Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 and helping scientists learn about the planet. It’s now wrapping up its final mission. The probe is flying between Saturn and its rings—a risky trip, since the rings are made of zooming rocks and ice chunks. This September, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere and burn up. In the meantime, it’s sending back photos from this exciting vantage point. Those include new images of Pan, Saturn’s closest moon. The tiny moon is only about 22 miles (35 kilometers) wide. It whips around Saturn once every 13.8 hours. The most striking thing about this moon, though, is its shape. The Cassini images, the nearest pictures ever taken of Pan, capture the weird ridge that circles the little moon. People disagree about…

Back in 1986, researchers came up with the boredom proneness scale, or BPS. The point was to tell how likely you are to feel bored. (Next time you’re bored, why not take the BPS test for yourself? Search for the quiz online.) But the BPS team assumed there was only one kind of boredom. In 2013, Anastasiya Lipnevich worked with a team of researchers on a boredom study. They built on earlier research by members of the team to find that there are actually five kinds of boredom. Wow, boredom already seems a lot less boring! In order of least to most awful, the five kinds of boredom are: 1 Indifferent boredom, when you feel relaxed and not really that disturbed by your boredom. Maybe you’re just daydreaming, and liking…

Numbers are full of surprises—and lots of kooky patterns. Here’s just one example. Think of an even number between 0 and 9. Create a new number by writing down the original number, then half this number, and then the original number again. Divide the result by the original number. Suppose you start with 2. You would write 212. Divide this by the original number. 212/2 = 106. For 4, the equation is 424/4 = 106. What answer do you think you’ll get starting with 6 or 8? Try it. Seven-year-old Dylan Trueblood, a keen Muse reader, discovered this pattern one night when he couldn’t sleep and started playing with numbers. And he went further. What happens when you start with even numbers that are 10 or larger? Things change a…

WHAT WOULD you do with your time if you couldn’t use a cell phone, computer, or other digital device? Would you perish of boredom? Or would you feel happier and more relaxed? Some teens have tried it and lived to tell the tale. Many schools and other organizations have tried some form of a “tech timeout” or “unplug challenge.” In these experiments, groups of people give up their digital devices for a few days. The experts running these challenges argue that technology often distracts us from more important things—like face-to-face conversations, creative projects, and enjoying the outdoors. Ideally, taking away technology would increase your enjoyment of the real world, here and now. Sometimes that’s what happens. Esther Laver, a 16-year-old who lives in the United Kingdom, voluntarily took part in…