Tiny Frogs Ring in Spring

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Peepers fill their vocal sacs with air until they look like a balloon, then they let out a "peep" as they release the air.
Photograph by George Grall

Spring peepers are found in wooded areas and grassy lowlands near ponds and swamps in the central and eastern parts of Canada and the United States.These loud amphibians are rarely seen, but as temperatures begin to rise in March and April, the males certainly are heard. Theirpeep… peep… peepcreates an other-worldly whistling sound that, to many, is the first sign of spring.

Spring peepers(Pseudacris crucifer)are tan or brown in color with dark lines that form an X on their backs. They grow to about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) in length, and have large toe pads that act as suction cups for climbing.

They are nocturnal creatures, hiding from many predators during the day and emerging at night to feed on ants, beetles, flies, and spiders.

When the warmer weather arrives, male frogs attempt to attract a mate with a spring serenade. The frogs normally perform in trios. The one who starts each round usually has the deepest voice. The "vocal sacs" under their chins allow the frogs to “sing.” They pump the sacs full of air until they look like a full balloon, then let out a loud "peep" while discharging the air. They “peep” about once every second. These chirps can often be heard as far as a half-mile away.

After a female and male peeper mate, the female lays her eggs in water and spends theremainder of the year in the forest. During the winter, they hibernate under logs or behind loose bark on trees. The music dies down during the cold months, but thechirps of peepers will soon be heard again, sounding the coming of spring.

Text by Lyssa White

Honeybee Mystery

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Although the 22-percent smaller size of starter honeycomb cells on the right cannot easily be seen, the tighter, more natural spacing helps honeybees better survive varroa mite infestations.
Photograph by Jack Dykinga/ARS/USDA

All across the United States, honeybees are flying away from their hives and dying. Empty hives are causing a lot of worry about some important food crops.

Bees give us a lot more than delicious honey. They are pollinators—they enable plants to produce the fruits and nuts we enjoy by carrying pollen from one plant or flower to the next. The wind pollinates oats, corn, and wheat, but many other plants (like apple and cherry trees and melon vines) depend on insects, bats, and birds.

Animals pollinate about one out of every three bites of food we eat. And in the U.S., millions and millions of bees kept by human beekeepers fly around doing a lot of this important work for food crops.

Professional beekeepers raise honeybees, box them up, and send them on trucks to fields where farmers grow food. Bees live in groups of about 40,000 individuals called colonies.

California’s almond crop alone depends on about half the bees in the country, about 1.5 million colonies! The bees pollinate in the almond groves for about six weeks, and then are sent on to work other crops. But now the almond crop and many others could be in trouble with so many bees dying.

“The colony is what we call a super-organism,” says Dr. Jeff Pettis of the Bee Research Laboratory at the U.S. Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland. “When a lot of the bees die, the whole colony is at risk.” Researchers like him at government and university labs all over the country are trying to figure out why so many bee colonies are dying.

However, explains Pettis, bees are hard to study. Most die away from the hive, so researchers don’t have dead bodies to examine. And when researchers return to a hive after two weeks, about half the bees they studied on their first visit will be dead, replaced by new ones in the natural life cycle of bees.

Making detective work even harder, these busy insects fly up to two miles away from their hive in search of pollen and nectar from flowers. So when bees pick up diseases or get exposed to poisons in their environment, it is hard to know exactly where that happened.

“It isn’t like studying a large animal like a cow that doesn’t move around much and is easy to find out in the cow field,” says Pettis.

Researchers do have some ideas about what could be affecting bee health. They could be sick from poisons widely used to kill insects, or they might not be getting enough good food to stay strong. Also, tiny insects called mites feed on bees. “Any or all of these things could be weakening the honey bees,” explains Pettis, “and then a virus or bacteria could be doing the killing.”

Pettis is hoping for a solution, because bees are so important. “Here’s a good example of what pollinators like bees give us,” he says. “You can eat plain oatmeal every day and get by, and oats are pollinated by the wind. But if you want to add some blueberries or strawberries or nuts to your daily oatmeal, those are the things you have to thank pollinators for. Bees are worth protecting because their work adds so much to our diet.”

I scream, you scream, we all scream for . . . ow! That cone of vanilla fudge swirl has done it again: The sweet treat has quickly given you a bad headache. But don't blame theice cream — it's not acting alone.The roof of your mouth, your nerves, and your blood vessels (blood vessels are tiny tubes that carry blood through your body) are to blame, too!

Here's the scoop on what happens. When you eat or drink, food or liquid touches your palate (say: pal-it) before you swallow. Your palate is also known as the roof of your mouth. You can feel your palate withyour tongue.

When something very cold touches the center of the palate, the cold temperature can set off certain nerves that control how much blood flows to your head.The nerves respond by causing the blood vessels in the head to swell up. This quick swelling of the blood vessels is what causes your head to pound and hurt. Some people call this a "brain freeze," even though nothing is really happening in the brain — it's all in the blood vessels of the head.

And ice cream isn't the only food that can make your head hurt. Anything that's very cold — like ice pops, slushy frozen drinks, and even cold soda, water, milk, or juice — can make the blood vessels swell.

A headache from ice cream or another cold food usually lasts about a minute or so, although it can feel like much longer. This kind of headache almost never lasts more than 5 minutes, and it goes away on its own. And although you may feel pain, it's not dangerous and doesn't mean that anything is wrong in your body.

Want to lick your ice cream headaches? Some doctors say that simply eating cold foods more slowly can help prevent brain freeze. You can also try warming foods up a tiny bit in the front of your mouth before swallowing them. And ifyou start to feel an ice cream headache coming on, take a break from the cold food for a minute or two. That wayyour palate will warm up a little so you can enjoy the rest of your chilly dessert.

Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD
Date reviewed: June 2007

Don’t Sweat It:

You’re Covered

ACS Publications

High quality. High Impact TM

ACS Green Chemistry

Chemistry for Life

Think about when you sweat. After running around at recess? Playing sports? Just standing in the sun on a hot summer day? In each of these cases, your body is trying to get cooler. When you are hot, you sweat. Your body makes sweat inside tiny coiled tubes buried in your skin, called sweat glands. The average person has over 2 million of them! Sweat is released onto the surface of your skin through small openings called pores. It may not feel like it when you’re sweating a lot, but the water in your sweat is always drying on your skin. As it dries, it carries away some of the extra heat from your body. This process is known as evaporation.

What are Electrolytes?

Besides water, you release minerals called electrolytes. Your body needs electrolytes so your nerves can talk to each other, your muscles can contract and move as they’re supposed to, and you maintain the right balance of water in your cells. The most abundant electrolytes found in your body are sodium, potassium, and chloride. When you sweat, these electrolytes come together to form salts that give sweat a salty taste.

Keeping the right amounts of water and electrolytes in your body is important. Without enough of either, your muscles can become weak or can cramp up. You may also get a headache or feel dizzy.

Water is Best

For exercise or play that lasts 30 minutes or less, drinking plenty of water is best. Our bodies usually get enough electrolytes from what we eat and drink during the day. For example, bananas and potatoes are full of potassium. Do you have any ideas of foods you may eat that contain electrolytes? You can check nutritional labels on food packages or ask a family member or teacher. Athletes who are very active for long periods of time can lose a lot of electrolytes as they sweat. In that case, they need to replace these electrolytes. That’s why you may see athletes gulp sports drinks as well as water as they play. Remember, to do your best at sports, stay hydrated with plenty of water. Luckily, you do not have worry about staying cool; your body has it covered—with sweat!

Plants That Eat Trash!

from Celebrating Chemistry

Did you ever wonder what plants

eat? Mostly, they take things

that humans don’t want, like carbon

dioxide and manure, and turn them

into things that we do want, like

oxygen and food.

We eat plants to

stay healthy, and we burn plants for

fuel. We even use plants for wood

to build houses, but plants can do a

lot more. Scientists are using plants

to clean up pollution. Plants can

help to clean air, to clean soil, or

to clean ground water.

The process of using plants to

clean up pollution is called

phytoremediation (fi'-toe-re-me'-

de-a'-shun). “Phyto” means plant,

and “remediation” means to remedy

or cure. So, using plants to help

clean up the environment is really

a way to cure our planet of

pollution that may harm us,

other animals, or other plants.

All plants help to clean up the air

by taking in carbon dioxide and

giving out oxygen for us to breathe.

Some plants, like spider plants and

asparagus ferns, can also remove

cigarette smoke and other pollutants

from the air.

Trees may be used to clean ground

water. The trees take in the dirty

water through their roots, and sweat

out clean water through the pores

in their leaves. The pollution stays

locked away inside of the tree until

it dies.

Pine trees have been used in the

southern United States to clean up

ground water pollution, because

they grow very quickly. The pine

trees can also be used for lumber.

Other trees that clean water are

eastern cottonwood trees, hybrid

poplar trees, and juniper trees.

Scientists have also used trees to

clean not only the ground water,

but also the soil. The plants soak

up the pollutants in the soil along

with water. In some cases, the

plants take the pollutants apart. In

other cases, the plants simply soak

up the pollutants and hold on to

them. Poplar and mulberry trees

are the ones mentioned the most.

Smaller plants like alfalfa and

ryegrass can be used as well.

Plants can also team up with bacteria

in the soil. The bacteria eat the

pollution first and convert it into

plant food. Then the plants soak

up what is left.

Using plants to clean up pollution

makes good sense, and the process

results in cleaner air, cleaner water,

and cleaner soils.

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How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are popular amongst children and adults. Yes, anyone can make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But can you make a good one? Here are a few tips to create a childhood favorite snack.

Instructions

Step 1

Using a knife, spread a generous layer of peanut butter on one slice of bread.

Step 2

Clean the knife with a napkin or use another knife so the peanut butter and jelly don't mix in their containers.

Step 3

Spread jelly or jam on the other slice of bread. Use slightly less jelly than peanut butter.

Step 4

Put the two pieces of bread together with the peanut butter and jelly sides facing one another. Cut the sandwich in half for easier eating.

Source:

Social Studies for Kids

The LongestRivers in the World

Did you know that the longest river in the world is the Nile? Egypt's greatest river is 4,135 miles long! In fact, Africa has two of the ten longest rivers. The Congo, which flows through central Africa, is Number 8 at 2,914 miles long.

What's the second longest river? Why, the Amazon, of course! It is about 4,000 miles (3,980, really) from start to finish, winding its way through most of South America.

China lays claim to Numbers 3 and 6: The Yangtze River is 3,917 miles long, and the HuangHe is 3,395. North America's longest river, the Mississippi and Missouri combination, comes in at 3,870 miles long.

How do we measure these rivers? Geographers calculate the distance from the source of the river to its mouth. For instance, the Ob-Irtysh River, which is Number 7 on the list, is 3,354 miles long from its source in southern Russia to its mouth in the ObBay, in the very cold waters off northern Russia.

Russia has three more rivers in the Top Ten. Number 5 is the Yenisie River, which flows through Siberia and is 3,440 miles long. The AmurRiver runs through northeast Asia and totals 2,744 miles in length. The LenaRiver, at Number 10, flows north through centralRussia and is 2,728 miles long.

Graphics courtesy of ArtToday