2019-01-01_Discover

THE CRUX

16 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

TRENDING

BY LACY SCHLEY

Everything in Moderation

“There are small mundane

aspects of the ancient world that

can be found, that can be reached,

that can be understood by equally

small, mundane little pieces of

evidence. There is a curiosity,

at least to me, about what we can

continue to find there.”

— archaeologist Eric Poehler on excavating

the ancient Roman city of Pompeii

Millions of American adults are sedentary, sleep deprived and

overloaded with screens. But what about kids? In a recent paper,

a research team from Canada explored data from a 10-year study

on roughly 4,500 U.S. kids ages 8 to 11 years old. According to

recommendations from the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology,

children should exercise at least one hour daily, get no more than

two hours of recreational screen time each day and sleep nine to 11

hours. The results of the paper indicated that children who met those

guidelines had better cognition. However, most of the kids failed to

hit all three marks.

Building Blocks

A Dirt-Cheap Recipe

In a recent paper,

astrophysicists at the

University of Central Florida,

NASA and the Florida

Institute of Technology

published instructions on

how to re-create Mars-like

soil. Making mock Red Planet

dirt isn’t new — it’s one of

the few ways scientists have been able to study things

like how plants might fare beyond Earth. But experts

have struggled to settle on standardized recipes: Some

are based on outdated science, some only mimic one

aspect of the soil and some only NASA has access to.

The UCF team’s recipe, though, is based on chemical

signatures the Curiosity rover picked up in Martian

dirt. Though the recipe is freely available, the team is

also selling batches of the soil for about $9 a pound.

The hope is that this simulated soil will spur higher-

quality work to help experts better gauge how Mars’

dirt could affect exploration of the planet.

Robo-Builders

Researchers at MIT have

developed fiberglass-

spinning robots that could

be construction workers

of the future, building

on sites where access is

limited or dangerous. At

first glance, these Fiberbots

resemble a camping lantern.

Affixed to the top is a rotating arm that spins out a

fiberglass strand around the rest of the robot, akin to

a silkworm cocooning itself by spinning a silk thread.

An ultraviolet light hardens the fiberglass “cocoon”

into a hollow tube. Then, the bot inches up to the top

of the stabilized tube section. It repeats the process,

eventually building a customizable pipelike structure.

The hope is that the Fiberbots can someday build

remotely in hard-to-reach places on Earth and beyond.

Gut Feeling

The brain isn’t the only

home for neurons: Many of

these nerve cells also hang

out in your gut, among

other places. The so-called

enteroendocrine cells that

line the gut chat with the

brain via hormones, talking

about things like that snack

you just ate. Usually, this

hormonal communication

can take anywhere from minutes to hours. Now,

researchers have discovered that enteroendocrine cells

can also communicate with the brain the same way

neurons there do, by sending electrical signals in just

milliseconds. The finding poses the question of how

this new mechanism comes into play in conditions such

as intestinal and digestive disorders.

0% 100%

Who Met the Recommendations?

Total kids included: 4,

Physical activity

Screen time

51%

37%

Sleep 18%

Met at

least one

recommendation:

71%

Met all three:

5%

Source: “Associations between 24 hour movement behaviours and global cognition in US children: a cross-sectional observational study,”

The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2018.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: SURIYACHAN/SHUTTERSTOCK; UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA/KAREN NORUM; THE MEDIATED MATTER GROUP; MAGIC MINE/SHUTTERSTOCK. OPPOSITE: RAN WANG