Curio Cabinet

Fungus-powered robots might not sound that cool at first, but they’ll grow on you. Scientists have found a way to use live fungi to drive small, robotic machines called “biohybrid” robots. This type of machine could represent a big leap forward for robotic engineering. After all, biology has already figured out how to detect and send a variety of stimuli through self-replicating cellular structures, whereas today’s robots still rely on things as crude as circuit boards and copper wires. Scientists at Cornell University decided to switch things up by building a biohybrid robot that uses mycelium (the root-like parts of fungus) to control its movements.
 
Previously, biohybrid robots have been made using cells and parts from vertebrates, insects, and even sea slugs, but the Cornell team is the first to use fungus. For their robot, they grew mycelium directly on an electrical interface which converts electrophysiological activity from the fungus into signals that are sent to actuators. That’s not too far off from what fungus already does in nature, where expansive mycelium networks intertwined with root systems can transport nutrients between plants and communicate using chemical signals. So far, they’ve made a robot with wheels and another with legs. Both versions are quite capable of moving around based on the mycelium’s responses to stimuli. For now, the researchers are experimenting with using light to control the movement of the robots, but they are planning to use chemical signals in the future. Since mycelium are already capable of responding to different stimuli, there’s no need to have different sensors for light, chemicals, and pressure; the fungus acts as an all-in-one sensor unit. In the future, scientists believe that this technology could be used to create mostly autonomous robots, with applications in fields like agriculture, where they could freely roam about to dispense fertilizer or pesticides based on the chemical composition of the soil. Fungal farmers? Funny, but feasible!

 
[Image description: A cluster of white oyster mushrooms surrounded by grass.] Credit & copyright: Teknad, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Do dinosaurs still walk among us? It may sound like a question for bigfoot hunters and Nessie enthusiasts, but scientifically speaking, the answer is (sort of) yes. Birds, after all, are direct, living descendants of dinosaurs, and no bird illustrates this fact more plainly than the cassowary. These massive, flightless birds, with their head crests and bright coloring, look like something straight out of Jurassic Park. Rather than running from them in terror, though, people all over the world are doing their best to save this endangered creature. In fact, a bird park in England’s Cotswolds region, called Birdland, recently made international headlines when a cassowary chick was born there. Cassowaries rarely breed in captivity—in fact, it took 25 years for a chick to be born at Birdland, and it’s only the fourth cassowary to ever be hatched in Europe. It goes to show the importance of saving cassowaries’ native habitat, the rainforests of Australia, New Guinea, and their surrounding islands.
 
Cassowaries are the third largest birds in the world, standing up to six feet tall and weighing as much as 175 pounds. Their bodies and wings are covered in shaggy, black feathers, while distinctive, bright blue heads and necks are bare. Both males and females have head crests, known as casques, which are thought to help them shed excess heat. While cassowaries’ ancient ancestors were velociraptor-like dinosaurs, around 60 million years ago these evolved into birds in the order Struthioniformes, the only living member of which is the ostrich. It was just 10 million years ago that cassowaries broke away from the Struthioniformes order and began changing into the colorful birds they are today. The three living species of cassowary are now members of the order Casuariiformes, along with emus.
 
Despite their fearful appearance, strong legs, and wickedly sharp talons, cassowaries primarily eat fruit, including black palm berries and figs. While cassowaries are omnivores and do hunt, their prey consists mostly of small rodents and reptiles. While cassowary breeding habits remain somewhat mysterious, they are typically thought to mate between June and October. They lay clutches of three to five eggs, which hatch into fuzzy, yellow-and-brown-striped chicks. The chicks may look drab compared to adult cassowaries, but they do hatch from bright green eggs. It seems these birds can’t help but live colorful lives, right from the beginning.

 
[Image description: A cassowary standing in thick, green brush. It is a large, flightless bird with a blue neck and head, a black body, and a brown head crest.] Credit & copyright: Dave Kimble, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work has released this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

Oof, that must have hurt! Our solar system’s many moons and planets have, throughout their long history, dealt with plenty of asteroid impacts. These destructive collisions left many scars still visible today, but scientists at Kobe University in Japan have found one case that stands out from the rest. Jupiter is no stranger to asteroid impacts, as its immense gravity attracts drifting space rocks. But when Jupiter casts its gravitational net, not all of the asteroids reach the planet’s surface. Instead, they often collide with one of Jupiter’s many moons, like Ganymede. The largest of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede bears innumerable craters on its surface from eons of such asteroid impacts, but there’s one that left more than just a scar. The largest crater visible on its surface features a circular furrow that seems to spread out from a single point—the site of impact. This four-billion-year-old crater is so large that much of its visible detail has been obscured by a smattering of smaller craters from other asteroids. Naoyuki Hirata, a planetologist at Kobe University, knew that whatever left the crater must have been massive.
 
Figuring out exactly how massive was tricky. One of the clues to the size of the asteroid was the location of the crater that the furrow system emanates from, almost directly on the other side of the tidally-locked moon. That, along with the angle of impact, indicates that the asteroid was large enough to shift the rotational axis of the moon significantly, enough that the impact site, which faced Jupiter, now faced away. It’s not an event without precedent, as discoveries made through the New Horizons space probe indicate that Pluto once experienced something similar. Hirata estimates that the Ganymede asteroid must have been around 186 miles wide, or 20 times larger than the asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater 66 million years ago on Earth. That asteroid famously caused the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. If the Ganymede asteroid had hit the Earth, it’s safe to say we’d be missing a lot more than dinosaurs.
 
[Image description: A dark night sky with stars visible.] Credit & copyright: Kai Pilger, Pexels

Tuscany is known for its fine wines and the vineyards that produce them. Soon, Tuscan tourists won’t even have to travel anywhere to get to a vineyard—they’ll be under one as soon as they get off their flight. Like many other airports around the world, the Aeroporto Amerigo Vespucci in Florence has been embracing sustainability measures to reduce energy consumption. However, they’re doing so with unmatched Tuscan flare. The airport has plans to add a 19-acre green roof, which will consist of living plants to form an insulating barrier, but it won’t just be a standard garden or lawn that covers the terminals. Instead, the airport’s green roof will be a sloping vineyard visible from beneath.
 
The ambitious construction project is set to be completed in two phases taking place in 2026 and 2035. Of course, there are plans to cultivate the vineyard’s grapes to produce wine, possibly on site. The project isn’t just an elaborate ploy to attract tourists, but an effective way to reduce the busy airport’s energy consumption. Buried in the vineyard will be heat exchanger coils which will be used to warm the building in winter and cool it in summer. Heat exchangers are an efficient method of climate control because, instead of creating heat, they simply move heat from one place to another. So, in the winter, the heat exchanger will move residual warmth in the vineyard’s soil to the interior of the airport, while in the summer, it will move heat in the interior outside, to the soil. Even without the heat exchange system, the green roof alone helps maintain a stable temperature year-round. On top of all that, solar panels will be placed between the vines and translucent photovoltaic panels. Along with producing energy, the panels will act as windows for those below, allowing visitors plenty of natural lighting and a peek at the vineyard. That’s a view anyone can raise a toast to.

 
[Image description: A close-up photo of green grapes growing in a vineyard.] Credit & copyright: W.carter, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

No need to pan for gold, let the planet shake it out for you. Despite being one of the world’s most sought-after metals, the details of how small gold particles form into large nuggets has long baffled scientists. Equally puzzling was why large nuggets and veins of gold are usually found clinging to quartz, one of Earth’s most common minerals. Now, scientists from Monash University in Australia have detailed a new theory: that earthquakes and quartz may work together to form large nuggets of gold. The idea, outlined in a recent issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, states that the vast pressure earthquakes exert on quartz activates a special property of the mineral called piezoelectricity. This occurs when some materials, including quartz, emit an electrical charge under mechanical stress. This charge makes it easier for gold nanoparticles in fluid beneath the Earth’s crust to gather on the surface of quartz, since it changes the arrangement of charged atoms inside the quartz, thereby allowing gold nanoparticles to “stick” to the mineral more easily. Researchers tested their theory in a lab by placing quartz in a fluid that contained gold nanoparticles. When they modeled the type of electrical field that quartz would produce during an earthquake, the quartz produced a charge that caused the gold nanoparticles to build up on its surface. It seems that, even while toppling buildings, earthquakes leave behind some precious surprises in the form of precious metal.

[Image description: Gold forming on a nugget of quartz.] Credit & copyright: Miguel Calvo, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.