Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

ALL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, PEOPLE WERE GETTING SICK. COULD FOOD DISEASE DETECTIVES CRACK THE CASE BEFORE THE NUMBERS SPIRALED OUT OF CONTROL? JUNE 1, 2009 It was a warm and muggy night. Epidemic intelligence officer Karen Neil slumped at her file-cluttered desk at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. She was contemplating a cluster of infections that had broken out across the country. Back in May, 17 people in 13 states had gotten stomach cramps, nausea, and diarrhea from something they’d eaten. Now that same something had sickened 44 people in 22 states. But Neil had no idea what that something was. Or how many more people would fall ill before she and her team could crack the case. She did know one thing,…

It’s often tough to figure out how to win even a really simple game. Consider the two-player game called Chomp. A move consists of picking one checker anywhere in a rectangular array of checkers, then removing that checker along with all the checkers above and to the right of it. It’s like taking a big, neat bite out of a chocolate bar divided into easy-to-break-off sections. You and your opponent take turns “chomping” on the checkers. The loser is the player forced to take the last “poisoned” checker in the lower left corner. When you start with a square of checkers, the first player can automatically win. Can you see how? Here’s the strategy. If you go first, pick the checker that’s diagonally up and to the right of the…

JANUARY 5, 2012 I sprouted, thrust into this world without anyone consulting me. I am not one that instills flutters in the human heart. I am utilitarian, hearty vegetative matter that can thrive under harsh conditions. I am zucchini—and I am in space. JANUARY 7 I became aware of my fellow crew members for the first time. One is my gardener, who waters my roots every day. I overheard that we are in a spacecraft orbiting Earth and are part of a long space mission. JANUARY 9 I discovered that my roots are bound in a Ziploc bag. This bag has a canoe-shaped piece of foam wedged in the opening to hold in moisture. My stem is held in place by a piece of scrap spongy material called pigmat. Used…

People often ask me if Tang—the powdered, originally orange drink mix—is still consumed in space. Don’t laugh, but we astronauts still drink it. Dehydrating—or taking the water out of—food, saves space, weight, and increases shelf life. Think of the kinds of foods you’d take on a hiking trip—foods that are small, light, and nutritious. Traveling through space follows the same requirements. Still, today’s space foods look a lot more like foods we’re used to eating every day. Shelf-stabilized foods, like nuts or brownies, can come aboard pretty much as they are. Something like macaroni or noodles would be specially prepared, then preserved and packaged to prevent spoilage. Creamed spinach can look like plastic-wrapped green goo. It’s an involved process, but food on a space mission can be quite varied. We’ve…

I live on a farm with my parents, my two brothers, and Popine. Popine has lived with us since before I was born. Even though she is a sourdough starter—a collection of wild French yeasts—we talk about her as a person. She spends her days in a clay jar that moves from a warm nook near the woodstove to the back of the refrigerator. Feeding Popine Popine is most active when she is warm and ready to bake bread, something we do about once a week. We keep her in the refrigerator when we are not baking so that she doesn’t get in a bad mood and become too sour. But before we can bake with her, we have to feed her a lot. Luckily, she’s not a picky eater.…

Joseph Yoon is the executive director of Brooklyn Bugs, an organization based in New York City that is increasing the awareness and appreciation for edible insects. He enjoys cooking dishes that feature insects and says he wants to “normalize edible insects around the world.” Yoon gives presentations, educational workshops, cooking demonstrations, and classes to people of all ages to spread the word that eating bugs is not only healthy, but also good for planet Earth! WHY EAT A BUG? IS IT GOOD FOR YOU? Eat bugs because they are delicious, they’re healthy for you, and they’re also sustainable! Edible insects are sustainable because compared to traditional livestock like cattle and pigs they require far fewer resources, such as water, land, and feed. They also emit a fraction of the greenhouse…

Has a delectable ice-cream sundae in a magazine ad ever made your mouth water? Well, your taste buds might be in for a surprise if you could take a bite. Advertising professionals know that a scoop of real ice cream melts into a goopy mess under the hot lights of a photo studio. That’s why the ice cream you admired could actually have been cold mashed potatoes and food coloring. Not Ready for Its Close-Up But wait—isn’t the best way to get a delicious-looking photograph of food to prepare something delicious and take a picture of it? Not necessarily, say the members of a bizarre and highly competitive profession known as food styling. These folks are so persnickety they can spend a week getting a single meal ready for its…

HUNGRY? Try some greased casserole with slices of lemon juice. You just have to figure out how to “milk the eggs until they turn into fish mixture” and “wash a few slices of lemon juice.” Oh, and you’ll need to stop at the store for “one cup cold boiled frosting,” “one sour and large fish,” and “two sprigs of bread.” This wacky recipe was generated in 2016 using artificial intelligence (AI). Jamie Brew of Botnik, an entertainment company, posted it on social media. In the few years since then, AI has improved by leaps and bounds. The latest, largest language model, GPT-3, writes poetry, news articles, and more. It learned how to do this by going through billions of webpages. Now, it can mimic human writing styles with impressive fluency.…

ARCHAEOLOGY How Cave People Caught Their Dinner Neanderthals were cousins of humans who used to live in Europe. They’ve been extinct for about 35,000 years. To learn how Neanderthals lived, scientists study fossils and other evidence found in the caves they inhabited. But one group of scientists tried something more dramatic: acting like cave people. Fossils show that Neanderthals used to share their caves with birds called choughs (pronounced “chuffs”). This kind of bird is still alive today. They use caves for sleeping at night. Some ancient chough bones have cut marks, hinting that Neanderthals ate them. Scientists wanted to know how ancient people might have hunted the birds. Working in teams, the biologists and ecologists went into caves at night. Neanderthals would have used torches, but the scientists carried…

Kira Capaldi originally wrote this piece for us in 2009, when she was 11 years old. Since then, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Vermont, in 2019. Cooking is still a regular and well-honored part of her life and, in the past few years it has been her job. She currently works as a cook at a cooperative where she enjoys learning new skills, techniques, and recipes from her kind and knowledgeable co-workers. At home, she enjoys experimenting with international dishes (especially Southeastern or Mediterranean foods) and inventing quick, healthy, and tasty meals for the days she is short on time and energy. Kira still loves to make pizza when she can, especially for her friends and family. She has made friends with some…

What do sauerkraut, yogurt, kimchi, pickles, and miso have in common? They’re all fermented foods! Before refrigerators were invented, people needed to find ways of preserving food that did not require cold temperatures. Enter lactofermentation. Fermentation is the process of introducing lactobacillus, a good bacteria that can keep food from spoiling. Lactobacilli produce a natural preservative called lactic acid that stops harmful bacteria from growing and spoiling food. In some cases, as with soy sauce, this lactic acid converts sugars into glutamic acid. Dairy products, fruits, and vegetables can all be fermented by creating the right environment for lactobacilli to grow. Fermented foods taste delightfully tangy, and as a bonus: They’re incredibly healthy for your gut!…

The Advanced Plant Habitat, like Veggie, is a growth chamber on the space station for plant research. It uses LED lights and a porous clay material with controlled release fertilizer to deliver water, nutrients, and oxygen to the plant roots. The habitat had its first test run on the space station in the spring of 2018 using Arabidopsis thaliana—a relative of cabbage and mustard—and dwarf wheat. But unlike Veggie, the habitat is enclosed and automated with cameras and more than 180 sensors that are in constant interactive contact with a team on the ground at the Kennedy Space Center. So, it doesn’t need much day-to-day care from the crew. Its water system, moisture levels, atmosphere content, and temperature are all automated. It has more colors of LED lights than Veggie,…