Curio Cabinet

You’re not likely to find this bird in a pear tree, but it’s still a holiday celebrity. It’s the perfect time of year to learn about partridges (as in “a partridge in a pear tree” from the Christmas song, 12 Days of Christmas). Despite their portly, soft appearance, these little birds were actually included in the song due to their surprisingly brave demeanor.
 
There are many species of partridge, but the kind from the Christmas song was likely a gray partridge, which is native to western Asia and Europe. It was introduced to North America in the early 1900s, and still roams the continent despite not being native. Because they were once so plentiful in Hungary, gray partridges are sometimes called Hungarian partridges, or simply “Huns” by hunters. As their name implies, they have mostly gray and white feathers, though there’s a bit of orange around their throats. Like most game birds, gray partridges are large enough to make a decent meal, weighing a little over a pound. Like other members of the pheasant family, they spend most of their time on the ground, in open grasslands, foraging for seeds and insects. Though they’re capable of flight, they typically don’t fly far, and only when threatened. They even sleep on the ground, huddling together with other members of their social group, called a covey, which can include around a dozen birds.
 
Mother gray partridges are famously protective of their young. Nesting on the ground leaves them vulnerable to many predators, like foxes and birds of prey, all of which are larger than partridges. Despite the size imbalance, mother gray partridges will claw and peck at any adversary. Since they're willing to give their lives in defense of their young, 12 Days of Christmas uses a partridge as a metaphor for the Christian figure of Jesus. Other birds in the song also serve as Christian references, such as the two turtle doves, which represent the bible’s two testaments. Metaphorical or not, live birds don’t really make the best Christmas gifts—especially not 184 of them in the span of 12 days.

 
[Image description: An illustration of a gray partridge, a bird with gray and white feathers, with an beak and feet.] Credit & copyright: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the American Foundation for the Maud E. and Warren H. Corning Botanical Collection 1963.594.40.b, Public Domain, Creative Commons Zero (CC0) designation.

Cancer treatments have come a long way, but this new one goes back in time. Scientists at Wistar Institute in Philadelphia have developed a new way to treat ovarian cancer using a nearly-forgotten technique from over a hundred years ago. Any type of cancer can be unpredictable, but ovarian cancer is exceptionally difficult to treat. It has the lowest survival rates among gynecological cancers due to its resistance to chemotherapy. Once ovarian cancer metastasizes, or spreads to other parts of the body, it tends to straight for the peritoneal cavity to the stomach and intestines, where the body maintains a naturally immunosuppressive state. This means that tumors in those areas are largely unaffected by the body’s immune system and are free to spread further.
 
When dealing with such an aggressive, treatment-resistant cancer, it would seem that the answer might be ever more advanced, state-of-the-art treatments. However, Wistar Institute’s Nan Zhang, Ph.D. and his colleagues took a different approach. They looked back in time to some of the earliest cancer treatment research from the late 1800s and early 1900s, specifically at the work of William B. Coley. Coley was a renowned surgeon in his time and is known today as the father of immunotherapy. His most notable work was his revolutionary treatment of bone cancers at New York Cancer Hospital, where he injected patients with “Coley’s toxins.” The “toxins” were a mix of dead pathogens that, when injected into the tumor, had a cure rate of around ten percent. That might not sound like much, but before Coley’s treatment came along, there were no viable treatments at all for many types of cancer. After his toxins were proven to work, they became the go-to treatment for thirty years, until the advent of radiation therapy. Scientists have known for a while that Coley’s toxins worked by activating myeloid cells, which play a key part in immunity, essentially “waking them up to the cancer’s presence. These cells happen to be plentiful in the peritoneal cavity. Researchers are using their own “toxins”, namely pathogen-derived β-glucan and interferon-gamma (IFNγ), to activate the myeloid cells. Now if we could just come up with a more palatable name than “toxins.”

These are a lot more useful than your average tattoos. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have designed a spray-on temporary tattoo that might replace conventional electrodes for EEGs. Short for electroencephalogram, an EEG is a test that measures brain activity and is used to diagnose brain injuries, tumors, epilepsy, and a myriad of other conditions related to the brain. Yet, as essential and high-tech as the test is, actually getting an EEG is a cumbersome ordeal for patients. First, electrodes must be attached to the scalp using adhesive gels, but the application process can take hours. Hair can easily get in the way, leading to a sticky mess. On top of all that, the gel used to hold the electrodes in place is only effective for around six hours. After that, the adhesive properties of the gel diminish, which affects the signal delivered through the electrodes. That’s far from ideal when patients might need to be monitored for an extended period, not to mention that it’s awfully uncomfortable.
 
Enter the electronic tattoo. Developed by researchers at UT Austin, the tattoo uses a biocompatible, conductive polymer ink that can simply be sprayed directly onto the scalp. Since it’s applied as a liquid, it’s not stymied by hair and once it dries in a few minutes, it can carry a reliable signal for around 24 hours. But there’s more than EEGs in the future for these e-tattoos. Researchers believe that the conductive ink could one day be used to create unobtrusive brain-computer interfaces that people with disabilities could use to control prosthetic devices, or computers for communicating through. That sounds like something for the distant future, but similar e-tattoos are already being used by some athletes to monitor biometric information, like heartrates. It may well be an inkling of things to come.

 
[Image description: A gray brain against a black background.] Credit & copyright: KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA, Pexels

Math and logic are an inseparable pair, right? Well, they weren't always. Mathematics and logic existed separately for thousands of years before the two disciplines ever merged together, but their eventual marriage was possible thanks in part to a man named George Boole. Boole, who died on this day in 1864, is known as the father of binary logic, and by extension, a key figure in the field of modern computing.
 
Despite his later career as a revolutionary academic and educator, Boole never received much formal education. Instead, his early life was enriched by his father’s personal interest in math and science. Born on November 2, 1815, in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, Boole was largely educated by his father, a shoemaker. As a child, he also attended local schools, but most of his knowledge in mathematics was self-taught. When his father’s business began to slow down, Boole started teaching at the young age of 16. By 20, he had opened his own school, and remained a dedicated educator throughout his life. He worked as the headmaster of his school for 15 years, during which time he took it upon himself to continue his own education. Beginning in the 1840s, Boole began to publish papers in the Cambridge Mathematical Journal. In 1849, he began his tenure as a professor of mathematics at Queens College in Cork, Ireland.
 
Before Boole, logic was considered part of philosophy. He published a pamphlet in 1847 titled The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, being an Essay towards a Calculus of Deductive Reasoning in which he argued that logic was not a matter of philosophy, but shared a domain with mathematics. He expounded on this idea in An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities, which he released in 1854.
 
With these two works, Boolean algebra was established, wherein math and algebraic symbols could be used to express a binary system of logic. Essentially, Boolean algebra is the mathematical representation of logic using boolean values: the values of true or false, often represented today as 1 and 0 in computer science. Boolean algebra also plays an important role in the theory of probabilities, information theory, and circuit design in digital computers. Boole’s integration of math and logic was a revolution millennia in the making, with much of his work based on Aristotle’s system of logic. Even Boole’s book, The Laws of Thought, was titled after existing fundamental laws of logic used by ancient philosophers.
 
Thanks to the recognition and acclaim he earned from his works, Boole was given an honorary membership to the Cambridge Philosophical Society and an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1858 and 1859, respectively. Sadly, Boole’s extreme dedication to his profession ultimately led to his death. One day in November of 1864, Boole walked through a cold and torrential downpour to reach his class at Queens College. Once in his classroom, he conducted an entire lecture in drenched clothes. In the following days, Boole contracted pneumonia and passed away at the age of 49, survived by his wife and children.
 
Even if Boole lived a long and healthy life, he wouldn’t have seen the advent of digital computing that relied on his principles with practical applications. While many programming languages exist today, digital computing is fundamentally based on circuits formed using the boolean values of true and false. Boole’s impact has been left on everything from algebra textbooks to the entire field of digital computing. All that, despite spending much of his life with little formal education. Who said a shoemaker’s son couldn’t accomplish great feats?

 
[Image description: Rows of white 1s and 0s against a back background.] Credit & copyright: Author’s own photo. The author releases this image into the Public Domain.

How can something so big be so small? Black holes conjure up the image of light and matter circling an unimaginably large void. Yet, while they’re theoretically capable of devouring entire galaxies, some black holes might be so small that they’ve gone unnoticed until now. According to MIT physicists who recently published a paper in Physical Review Letters, tiny black holes might have been responsible for shaping the cosmos and might explain the mystery behind dark matter. The existence of small black holes isn’t anything new. Stephen Hawking famously hypothesized the creation of “primordial” black holes soon after the Big Bang, which would have been regions of ultradense matter rather than anything like the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. MIT physicists, however, have discovered that the very same process that produced primordial black holes could have also led to the creation of even smaller, “super-charged” black holes that would qualify as a new state of matter. Both the primordial and super-charged black holes would have been created in the first quintillionth of a second at the birth of the universe, but while the former were likely scattered across the cosmos, the latter disappeared just as quickly as they came about. Most of them would have been about the size of an atom, but with the mass of an asteroid, though some may have been as small as protons and as massive as rhinos. While super-charged black holes no longer exist, they may have left their mark in ways that could be detectable in the future. During their brief existence, they could have affected the balance of fusing nuclei, and following their trail might reveal the nature of dark matter. Dark matter—invisible matter that outnumbers regular matter five to one but remains unaccounted for— could be primordial black holes, and tracking the effect of super-charged black holes might lead physicists to confirm the hypothesis. That would be a supermassive development indeed.

[Image description: A starry night sky with blue and purple streaks visible.] Credit & copyright: Felix Mittermeier, Pexels