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The recorder is simple, affordable and the first instrument many people play. My daughter had Zoom recorder classes last year, led by a very patient teacher. In this story, Katharine Gammon describes how a researcher devised a way to make the instrument more forgiving to eager players who might blow too hard and overshoot their note by an octave. As one expert told her, "It doesn't have to sound like a shrieking plastic toy." Chris Gorski, Senior Editor How a Physicist Would Make the Recorder Easier to Play With a bit of math and a 3D printer, researchers created an instrument that's more forgiving of a certain kind of amateur mistake. By Katharine Gammon, Contributor Trees May Become the Biggest Air Pollution Contributors in LA A new study can help the city plant better trees.                         By Krystal Vasquez, Contributor An Easier Way to Temper Chocolate Researchers discover a simpler (and greener) tempering method to give chocolate its texture, gloss and snap.                                                     By Meeri Kim, Contributor How Lanternfish Became One of the Most Successful Vertebrates on Earth Analysis of fish ear bones reveals how bioluminescent lanternfish became so abundant.                       By Joshua Learn, Contributor How to Speak Cicada Nala Rogers, Staff Writer                                                                                                                   Martian Dust Storms May Glow in the Dark Nikk Ogasa, Contributor Inflammation May Cause Cells to Rush Life-and-Death Decisions Nala Rogers, Staff Writer The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks By Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine Clocks don't just sit on the side table and tick along. It turns out that when you're a physicist, most anything can be a clock. I've never thought of clocks in the way they're described in this fascinating article. It calls them "thermal machines" that can be explained with quantum theory and also describes how you can plausibly consider a cup of coffee to be a clock -- just not a very good one. This one is worth a read for the quotes alone.                                                                                                                                                                                                     I'm Vaccinated. When Is It Safe to Take My Mask Off? By Tara Haelle, Wired Masks reduce the spread of the coronavirus. News broke on Wednesday about a randomized study that one expert called a nail in the coffin of anti-mask arguments. This separate story from Wired offers a useful framework to help you decide when to wear a mask to protect yourself and the people around you as the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges through the U.S. Streetlights, especially super bright LEDs, may harm insect populations By Jonathan Lambert, Science News Streetlights can shine in your bedroom window, they can blot out the stars, and, it turns out, they appear to harm insect populations. This story, based on a paper from last week's issue of the journal Science Advances, describes how caterpillar populations living alongside lit stretches of road in England were 30% -50% lower than those in dimmer areas, depending on the vegetation and type of light. Caterpillars along bright areas were also plumper, a possible indication of abnormal development. Read More from Inside Science Copyright 2021 American Institute of Physics. Inside Science syndicates its articles, columns, blogs and videos to news organizations. To initiate syndication, or request permission to republish our content (on a one-time or continuing basis), please contact Inside Science at insidescience@aip.org. News organizations seeking permission to republish Inside Science content must fully credit Inside Science as the original source of the content, include the author byline, and republish the original, unaltered form (excluding content titles, headlines, or sub-headlines). The reprint format can be seen here. Copyright conditions and usage terms are subject to change at any time without consent or any type of prior notice. To unsubscribe from all future mailings from Inside Science please click here. To manage your email subscriptions please click here.

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