Curio Cabinet

Is it all in the hips, or all in our heads? While birthing is rarely a pleasant process for mammals, it’s particularly dangerous for humans. For a long time, this difficulty was attributed to the size of human brains at birth, but new research on chimpanzees suggests otherwise. If there’s anything that sets humans apart from their great ape cousins, it’s that we have the largest, most complex brains among them. While the human brain is resource-hungry and the body it inhabits is frailer than many other mammals of comparable size, these shortcomings are more than made up for by the immense advantage of higher intelligence. It would seem natural, then, that such a brain would come to evolve despite the risk it poses during birth. Then there’s the matter of the shorter, narrower birth canals that humans have as a trade off for being able to walk upright. In order to give birth with these factors, human babies rotate as they exit the womb. One common complication that results from this is shoulder dystocia, or obstructed labor. Without medical intervention, this can be fatal to both mother and child. This combination of large brains and narrow birth canals has been referred to as the “obstetrical dilemma,” and it was thought to be unique to humans.
 
However, paleoanthropologists at the University of Zurich believe that difficulty in birthing might predate the large brains of humans. According to their research, chimpanzees also have difficult births, despite not having the same cranial capacity or the ability to walk upright as humans do. Therefore, the researchers believe that the anatomical features that make birthing so difficult could have existed long before humans developed their oversized brains, perhaps in the last common ancestor shared by chimps and humans. Researchers also pointed out that australopithecines, one of humanity’s ancestors, probably dealt with difficult births too. You’d think it would get easier after a few million years.

 
[Image description: A black-and-white illustration of a chimpanzee walking.] Credit & copyright: Albin Mesnel, Édouard Riou, Edward Blyth, Alphonse de Neuville, Mammalia. Their various orders and habits popularly illustrated by typical species, 1870, Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.

What’s a little rain while you’re driving? Terrifying. At least, it was at the beginning of the 20th century. American inventor Mary Anderson filed the first-ever patent for a windshield wiper on this day in 1903. Before then, people just had to make do with wet or muddy windshields. However, Anderson never got to reap the rewards for her world-changing invention.
 
Born in Alabama in 1866, Anderson wasn’t a career inventor. Little is known about her early life, but as an adult, she was a winemaker, rancher, and real estate developer. By all available accounts, her invention of the first windshield wiper was her one and only foray into the world of engineering or design. But her varied job titles implies that she likely had a keen eye for spotting opportunities, and the inspiration for her invention was no exception. The story goes that Anderson was visiting New York City during the winter and boarded a streetcar on one particularly wet and blustery day. Because of the inclement weather, the windshield of the streetcar kept getting splattered with water and debris, forcing the driver to open a window to manually wipe the windshield clean. Every time he did so, cold wind would blast through the opening, and this didn’t sit well with Anderson, who was used to the balmy Southern weather of her home state. Streetcar drivers weren’t the only ones who had to contend with this problem, of course. As automobiles became more common, the drivers of those vehicles resorted to similar measures or simply drove with their heads sticking out car windows. Inspired by the streetcar driver’s struggle, and perhaps frustrated by the cold ride, Anderson set out to come up with a better solution. In 1903, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Anderson with U.S. Patent No. 743,801, or Window-Cleaning Device.
 
Anderson’s invention, though groundbreaking for its time, doesn’t resemble the modern iteration much. Her version was still operated by hand (albeit from the inside) and consisted of a single rubber blade to clear the windshield. The device also included a counterweight to keep the blade firmly in contact with the glass, and though it was relatively primitive, it was still pretty effective. Unfortunately for Anderson, automakers were hesitant to embrace her invention early on. Despite several attempts, Anderson was never able to attract investors or have them manufactured for sale due to lack of interest. She may have simply been too ahead of her time. Automakers didn’t start making windshield wipers standard equipment in their vehicles until 1916. By then, Anderson’s patent had expired, keeping her from making any profit from her inventions through licensing. Then again, maybe automakers didn’t adopt her windshield wipers on purpose so as not to pay her any fees, though the actual reason is unclear.
 
Though her invention may not have earned her any money, Anderson has since been recognized for her contribution. In 2011, over 60 years after her death, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. These days, many improvements have been made to her original windshield wiper. In 1917, Charlotte Bridgewood invented the Electric Storm Windshield Cleaner (U.S. Patent No. 1,274,983), the first to be powered by electricity. A few years later, in 1922, brothers William M. and Fred Folberth invented the simply-named Windshield Cleaner (U.S. Patent No. 1,420,538) which was powered by redirected engine exhaust. However, the version that most windshield wipers are based on today was invented by Robert Kearns in the 1960s. Called Windshield Wiper System With Intermittent Operation (U.S. Patent No. 3,351,836), it was motorized and capable of variable speeds. Who knew there were so many ways to clean a windshield?

 
[Image description: raindrops on a windshield which has been partially wiped clean.] Credit & copyright: Valeriia Miller, Pexels

Who would have thought that carpenters might lead humanity to the stars? Developed by scientists at Kyoto University and logging company Sumitomo Forestry, the first ever wooden satellite has been launched into orbit 250 miles above the Earth. It’s meant to serve a surprisingly practical purpose. With thousands of satellites orbiting around the Earth at any given moment, space junk has never been more of a concern. Not only are satellites leaving behind potentially harmful materials as they fall to Earth, the ever-growing collection of abandoned hardware floating around poses a serious threat to humanity’s future in space. When even small pieces of metal collide at orbital velocity, the result can be catastrophic—more so when passengers are involved. That’s why the scientists in Japan developed the LignoSat, a 4-inch wide, sube-shaped satellite made mostly of wood rather than metal. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on an unmanned SpaceX rocket, the satellite is designed to disintegrate harmlessly on reentry at the end of its service life, reducing its footprint on the environment both on Earth and in space. Wood might not be as fancy as space-age aluminum or titanium alloys, but the scientists who designed LignoSat believe that the material is perfectly adequate for use in space, as the lack of water and oxygen in that environment means that it can’t rot or burn. Of course, not everything on the satellite can be made of wood—the internal components in LignoSat are conventional electronics designed to monitor the wood’s condition during its journey—but it does significantly reduce the metal needed with a renewable resource. For now, LignoSat is scheduled to orbit around the planet for six months before it’s decommissioned, but if it proves wood’s mettle as a metal substitute, more wooden satellites could follow. What’s next, log-cabin space stations?

[Image description: A starry night sky.] Credit & copyright: Felix Mittermeier, Pexels
 

It’s a tiny toad, but it’s making a big splash. Scientists at the Biology Institute of the University of Campinas in Brazil have discovered the second-smallest vertebrate ever. It’s a new species of toad that’s smaller than a fingernail. Also called toadlets, flea toads are possibly the smallest vertebrates in the world. The newly discovered species, Brachycephalus dacnis, is the second-smallest in stature, behind only Brachycephalus pulex, which was discovered in 2011. Flea toads get their name from their ability to jump astounding distances relative to their size. They have other differences that set them apart from larger frogs, too. For one, flea toads bypass the traditional tadpole stage and emerge from their eggs fully developed, a rare trait among frogs. Unlike other frogs that lay hundreds of eggs per reproductive cycle, flea toads only produce two at a time. Then there are some of the more extreme differences in anatomy, like fewer bones, fewer digits, and even missing organs. According to Luís Felipe Toledo, one of the researchers who published a paper on the new species, these adaptations are the result of miniaturization, a process in which a species evolves to be smaller.
 
Different species of flea toads are much more similar to one another than they are to larger frogs. In fact, they tend to look so much alike that their exact species can only be determined via DNA testing or in-depth analysis of their anatomy. That, combined with the fact that flea toads are very difficult to find in the wild, leads Toledo and other researchers to believe that there may be more species of flea toads than previously thought. Toledo also believes that flea toads may represent the very limit of how small vertebrates can get, and that it’s unlikely that any other undiscovered species in the genus Brachycephalus could be much smaller. That’s not too hard to believe; any smaller and they’d practically be microbes.

 
[Image description: A tropical rainforest with a palm tree and green vegetation.] Credit & copyright: Ayyuha Sideeq, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.