Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children April 2015

Sloth Drool Helps You Snooze Have you ever lain awake at night, fretting about a homework assignment or excitedly planning your net fan-fiction novel Maybe you listened to quiet music or drank a glass of warm milk to calm down. The latest all-natural sleep aid is something much less tasty: sloth drool. A South American company is selling liquid made from the saliva of sloths to help people sleep. Sloths are low-key animals that spend much of the day dozing. Chemicals in sloth saliva, the company says, can make a human as sleepy as a sloth. (Making the liquid doesn't harm any animals-workers use a tool like a turkey baster to suck saliva from the mouths of napping sloths.) Scientists aren't sure whether sloth drool can really help humans get…

There’s no doubt about it: the world is becoming slimier every day. Literally—we’re not talking about an increase in sleazy bad guys. Gooey, slippery, scummy slime is mucking up rivers, lakes, coral reefs, farm fields, and laboratories. In one future scenario, slime even ends up on breakfast tables. There isn’t just one kind of slime. There’s algal slime, bacterial slime, slime molds—slime galore. And of course, “slime” isn’t really a scientific word, so say “biofilm” if you want to sound smart. Boulder Boogers All over the world, scientists are scratching their heads at a mysterious increase—some say an invasion—in “rock snot.” This single-celled alga is technically called Didymosphenia geminate, or didymo for short. The problem is not the tiny plant itself, but what happens when it “blooms,” forming dense brown…

Cyanobacteria were Earth’s original slimers. Their remains, called stromatolites, are the oldest fossils ever found. But the most amazing thing about these tiny life forms is that they made Earth's first breathable air. Without them life as we know it would never have developed. No plants, no animals and definitely no humans. The earliest atmosphere churned with a toxic brew of nitrogen, methane, hydrogen, and other gases, but no oxygen. The only life forms—bacteria—lived without oxygen. In fact, it was poisonous to them. Then, around 2.5 billion years ago, cyanobacteria changed everything. Experts believe they were the first organisms to feed themselves by photosynthesis, like plants do now. They began converting sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into energy and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere as a waste product. At first…

Worried about what you’ll eat for dinner after the next super-volcano eruption or asteroid strike? Well, worry no more. Michigan Technological University professor Joshua Pearce has an answer: bacterial slime. For their new book, Feeding Everyone No Matter What, Pearce and his coauthor, David Denkenberger, researched several worst-case global scenarios. They focused on disasters that would destroy the world’s crops. For example, unbeatable pests, weeds, or diseases could wipe out the plants we grow for food. Sudden climate change could make it too hot or cold for crops to grow. Or dust from a giant volcano or asteroid collision could block the sun. (Cheery, no?) he scientists figured that it would take us about fie years to recover from such a disaster. But without agriculture, how would we eat in…

YOU’LL NEED: One cup of low-sodium chicken broth Pinch of dirt from outside Blue food coloring Water Plastic or glass container that can hold at least one cup of liquid Measuring cup Do your part to make the world slimier! See for yourself how biofilms form and attach to a surface. You’ll also discover why it’s really important to scrub your dishes—many biofilms are invisible unless you stain them with something like food coloring. BACTERIA LOVE CHICKEN SOUP! Chicken soup makes a great “growth medium” because it provides lots of nutrients that bacteria (and kids) need to grow. But bacteria don’t like their soup too salty. Use a low-sodium broth for best results. The bacteria “seed” comes from dirt in your yard. One teaspoon of healthy dirt can contain anywhere…

Q: Why do some people sleep in longer than others? It drives me crazy at sleepovers. —Charlotte L., age 11, Oregon A: Sometimes it seems as if there are two kinds of people in the world: larks and owls. Larks wake up bright and early every day. Owls sleep in late, probably because they were up late the night before. In reality, most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. But whatever schedule your internal clock may follow, the pattern your body prefers is more or less fixed throughout your life. Larks will always be larks; owls will always be owls. Except when you’re a teenager. During adolescence, people’s internal clocks tend to get pushed later and later, more toward the owl side of things. If you’re naturally a lark,…