Curio Cabinet

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.
 

This is no mere cat…it’s a meerkat! These weasel-like members of the mongoose family display some of the most unique behavior in the animal kingdom. Social and intelligent, especially for mammals of their size, meerkats hunt, work, and live together in large groups called mobs.
 
Meerkats are small mammals, standing just under 12 inches tall and weighing around two pounds. Yet, like their closest relatives, what they lack in size they make up for in scrappiness. With their ability to stand on two legs and run nimbly on all fours, meerkats can outmaneuver many predators. Those they can’t outrun must contend with meerkats’ long claws and sharp teeth. Like other mongooses, meerkats are resistant to some forms of venom. This trait comes in very handy since there are 30 species of venomous snakes in meerkats’ home country of Africa. However, snakes aren’t meerkats’ biggest predators. That distinction falls to birds of prey, like hawks and eagles, which can snatch meerkats from above before they can defend themselves. Large, terrestrial carnivores, like jackals and hyenas, are too big to fight off. To protect against these threats, meerkats have evolved a brilliant social system with built-in babysitters, lookouts, and secret escape routes.
 
Meerkat mobs include around 10 to 15 meerkats, and are made up of about three family groups, each with a breeding pair and their own young, called pups. Mobs dig elaborate systems of tunnels and underground dens, and spend most of their lives within a few hundred feet of these safe havens. Meerkat burrows can have 15 or more openings, allowing them to slip underground at many different points. While one or two meerkats watch the mob’s young while other adults stand lookout. If a predator is spotted, the guard will sound an alarm call, which sends the entire mob racing underground. During calmer times, adults will groom one another, sun themselves, and teach pups how to dig up prey, which includes insects like grubs, beetles, and even scorpions and snakes—it really does pay to be immune to venom.

 
[Image description: Two adult meerkats and five young meerkats standing at attention. One adult is looking to the right, the others are facing forward.] Credit & copyright: Amada44, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work, has released it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

They say that plenty of fiber is good for you…well, here’s a whole bunch! Researchers at Northumbria University in England and National Textile University in Pakistan have found a way to create textiles using waste materials from the banana industry. As a bonus, the process would produce energy at the same time. The method is set to roll out in Pakistan, which has large agricultural and textile industries. Pakistan also produces around 154,800 tons of bananas a year, and the fruits are one of the country’s largest agricultural exports. But banana production comes with a lot of waste. On average, every 2.5 acres of banana plantation produces around 220 tons of waste in the form of peels and the inedible “bodies” of each banana plant. Pakistan’s textile industry requires a lot of raw materials and energy, yet the country’s electricity isn’t always reliable in rural areas. To solve all these problems at once, Northumbria University and the National Textile University are teaming up with Eco Research Ltd in England, and Prime Eurotech in Pakistan. While the universities develop textiles from banana waste, whatever can’t be used for textiles will be used in the production of synthetic gas (syngas) and nitrogen fertilizers. That way, they’ll address the problem of waste while providing clean energy to the very communities that grow the bananas in the first place. As banana waste is converted into textile fibers, it could become a new source of income for these communities too, while reducing the amount of waste generated by the textile industry. In all, the process could make use of nearly 88 million tons of agricultural waste produced by the banana industry to produce over two billion cubic feet of syngas and 33 million tons of fertilizer. Cleaning up two industries at once—who knew bananas had such wide a-peel?

 
[Image description: Several bananas arranged on a white background. One is halfway unpeeled.] Credit & copyright: alleksana, Pexels

If you’re stuck in outer space, the only thing more unsettling than the deafening silence is a sound that you don’t recognize. After being stranded in orbit for months, the astronauts aboard the Boeing Starliner have had to contend with changing plans, changing rides, and a strange, pulsing noise. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams launched from Cape Canaveral on June 5 for what was meant to be an 8-day mission to assess the capabilities of the Starliner. Built by Boeing, the craft was designed for regular missions to the International Space Station (ISS). But test flights often don’t go according to plan. First, there was a helium leak in the propulsion system followed by reaction control system thruster failures. Although the astronauts were able to fix the helium leak, NASA decided to take the cautious approach and delay the return trip until the cause of the failures could be better assessed. To that end, they tested Starliner thrusters back on Earth. Meanwhile, the astronauts were told that their mission would be extended for another six months.
 
Now, the plan is for the duo to abandon the Starliner altogether, staying on the ISS until they can hitch a ride back to earth aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom, which will launch on September 24 and return with the stranded astronauts in February of next year, should everything go according to plan. With all that going on, Wilmore and Williams recently had to deal with yet another issue: a strange pulsing noise coming from the Starliner capsule. Fortunately, with everything else that has gone wrong, the mysterious sound was a relatively minor issue and was quickly resolved. Though it made headlines around the world when it was first discovered, it turned out to be feedback from a speaker on the capsule caused by its connection to the ISS. As for the astronauts, if they’re going to be stranded somewhere, at least it’s someplace with a view that can’t be beat.

 
[Image description: A dark night sky with stars visible.] Credit & copyright: Kai Pilger, Pexels

How do you turn devastation into hope? Turns out, the ingredients were there all along. A non-profit called Mobile Crisis Construction (MCC) is helping communities in Ukraine rebuild using rubble from the very war that has flattened so many Ukrainian buildings. MCC can take rubble and turn it into building blocks, which can be used to make new buildings. It sounds like recycling taken to extremes, but it’s simpler than it sounds. MCC has several mobile block factories which they can—as their name implies—deploy to wherever they’re needed. The factories are easy to transport because they’re modified to fit into a standard 20-foot shipping container. They take about 12 weeks to arrive at their destinations, but once they do, they can process enough rubble to produce around 33 to 44 tons of blocks every eight hours, which the MCC claims is enough for one school, five large houses, or ten small houses every week. What makes this possible is the unusual shape of the blocks, which look less like conventional bricks or cinder blocks and more like interlocking toy building blocks. Just like the toy version, they require no mortar to assemble because most of the blocks are molded into interlocking shapes that are simple to stack together. They also come with holes that can accommodate rebars for additional structural strength. According to the MCC, buildings constructed using their blocks can withstand earthquakes and cyclones. Of course, construction still requires the assistance of structural engineers and experienced workers on site, but the mobile factories at least address Ukraine’s current building-supply issue. Currently, MCC is focused on sending their factories to Ukraine, where they’re setting up near Kyiv. Once it becomes safe to do so, they plan to expand to other areas affected by the war. If all goes well, they’ll turn razed buildings into raised ones.