From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint or write. Many believe that music helps boost creativity, but an international study conducted by British and Swedish researchers is challenging that belief. Their findings indicate that music actually stymies creativity.

To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music “significantly damaged” the participants’ ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity. The research team also tested background noises such as those commonly heard in a library, but found that such noises had no impact on subjects’ creativity. The tasks were simple word games. For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower. Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. The single word, in this case, would be “sun” (sundress, sunflower, sundial). Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or a room with 3 different types of music: music with unfamiliar lyrics (歌词), instrumental music, or music with familiar lyrics.

“We found strong evidence of damaged performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions,” says co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University.

Dr. McLatchie and his colleagues theorize that music interferes (干涉) with the verbal working memory processes of the brain, blocking creativity. Also, as far as the library background noises having seemingly no effect, the study’s authors believe that was the case because library noises create a “steady state” environment that doesn’t disrupt concentration. It’s worth mentioning that even familiar music with well-known lyrics damaged participants’ creativity, regardless of whether or not it caused a positive reaction, or whether participants typically studied or created while listening to music.

For more than one hundred years, a great number of scientists have believed that tiredness in athletes originates in the muscles(肌肉). Precise explanations have varied, but all have been based on the “Limitations Theory”. In other words, muscles tire because they hit a physical limit—they either run out of fuel or oxygen or they drown in harmful by-products(副产品).

In the past few years, however, Timothy Noakes from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, has examined this standard theory. Tiredness, he argues, is caused not by signals springing from overtaxed muscles, but is an emotional response which begins in the brain. The fundamental nature of his new theory is that the brain paces the muscles to keep them well back from the edge of tiredness. When the brain decides it’s time to quit, it creates unbearable muscle tiredness. This “Central Governor” theory remains controversial, but it does explain many puzzling aspects of athletic performance.

A recent discovery that Noakes calls the “lactic acid paradox” made him start researching this area seriously. Lactic acid is a by-product of exercise, and the increase of it is often mentioned as a cause of tiredness. But when research subjects exercise in certain conditions created artificially, they become tired even though lactic acid levels remain low. Nor has the oxygen content of their blood fallen too low for them to keep going. Obviously, something else was making them tire before they hit either of these physiological limits.

Noakes conducted an experiment with seven cyclists. It has long been known that during exercise, the body never uses 100% of the available muscle fibres(纤维). The amount used varies, but in some tasks such as this cycling test the body calls on about 30%. His team found that as tiredness set in, the electrical activity in cyclist’s legs declined—even when they were making a great effort to cycle as fast as they could.

To Noakes, this was strong evidence that the old theory was wrong. “The cyclists may have felt completely exhausted,” he says, “but their bodies actually had considerable reserves that they could theoretically tap by using a greater amount of the resting fibres.” This, he believes, is the proof that the brain is regulating the pace of the workout to hold the cyclists well back from the point of extreme tiredness.

The Associated Press gardening expert Jessica Damiano recently reported about the many pictures of strangely shaped tomatoes sent to her from fans of her gardening advice. She said people sometimes question if the tomatoes are okay to cook. “The good news,” Damiano said, “is that their unusual appearance does not affect their taste or nutritional value.”

If you have ever cut open a tomato, you know they are divided into internal parts, called locules (子房室), which contain seeds and a substance called gel (凝胶). Most tomatoes have about four or five locules; other kinds of the fruit, like cherry tomatoes, contain two or three. But when a plant experiences temperature extremes, cell division in the developing fruit can go off track. Temperatures over 32℃ during the day and 27℃ overnight can lead the tomato to form an extra locule. But there is not enough room inside a tomato for the extra part, so it grows on the outside of the fruit. Not every tomato on an affected plant will be strange, however.

“Under the right conditions, this could affect one or two tomatoes per plant, depending on where they are in the development process and what the conditions are,” said Timothy McDermott. He is an assistant professor and extension educator at Ohio State University. “The likelihood of one of your tomatoes developing a locule oddity is estimated to be about one in a thousand,” McDermott said.

The extra-locule change is not the only strange looking caused by extreme heat. Conditions including flower drop, halted fruit formation and ripening can also arise when plants are grown outside their usual temperature limit.

Attach a piece of 40 to 50 percent shade cloth to sticks put into the ground around the plant. Leave it in place from 12 to 4 p. m., when the sun is at its strongest. Then remove it to avoid problems caused by a lack of sunlight. And, when harvesting your crop, remember: the funny-looking tomatoes taste just as good!