Curio Cabinet

When a butterfly flaps its wings, it threatens the electronics industry. The butterfly effect certainly does seem to be on full display as the devastation from Hurricane Helene is now, in a roundabout way, threatening to have a dire impact on everything from smartphones to AI. Many modern electronics rely on high-quality quartz to operate properly. Microwaves, televisions, computers, and a myriad of other products contain quartz somewhere inside. When an electric field is applied to a quartz crystal, it oscillates at a stable and reliable frequency, and this is used as a timing reference. The simplest example is a timepiece—most analog watches and clocks, despite their purely mechanical appearance, use electronics with quartz to keep time accurately. Quartz is actually very common, but not just any quartz will do. For it to provide precise, accurate timing, quartz of exceptional purity is needed. This kind of quartz is also used for semiconductors, which are essential components of any electronic device that doesn’t run on tubes. Such high-quality quartz is very rare, and only a handful of sites around the world are known to have significant deposits of it. One of those sites is located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, a small town of around 2,000. Located an hour from Asheville, the town is also known as Mineral City for its abundance of the rare quartz. Unfortunately, when Hurricane Helene struck, it dropped two feet of rain on the small town and caused widespread power outages. Among the affected were two companies that provide up to 90 percent of all the world’s high-quality quartz. It’s not just the power outage that’s hampering operations, but damage to the quartz mines themselves. Luckily, many semiconductor manufacturers keep robust quartz stockpiles in case of supply disruptions, so there won’t be immediate repercussions. Still, they can’t go on forever unless Spruce Pine gets up and running again. It’s just one more reminder not to underestimate the importance of small towns.

 
[Image description: Quartz crystals against a black and gray background.] Credit & copyright: MartinThoma, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them. So many of our essential electronic devices run on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but they have an annoying habit of not doing the one thing they’re supposed to: holding a charge. Fortunately, researchers at Stanford University may have discovered the cause of this irritating phenomenon, according to a paper published in Science. Lithium-ion batteries are relatively simple, using anodes and cathodes to store lithium ions. When the ions move between the two oppositely charged electrodes through an electrolyte, the resulting chemical reaction creates a charge by freeing up electrons. But if that’s all there was to it, lithium-ion batteries wouldn’t lose capacity and energy as quickly as they do, even when they’re not in use. The culprits, it seems, are hydrogen protons which are released into the cathode, breaking down electrolyte molecules with the help of electrons and leaking through the cathode. Hydrogen has long been suspected of causing these issues, but it was difficult to know for sure, since hydrogen atoms are pretty much everywhere and hard to isolate in a lithium-ion battery. So, researchers instead used deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen, that was easier to track. When deuterium was introduced into a battery, they found the exact amount of charge loss they expected from hydrogen. Maybe it’s problems like these that keep hydrogen from being considered a noble gas!

[Image description: A selection of batteries arranged in a triangle, seen from above.] Credit & copyright: mohamed abdelghaffar, Pexels
 

It’s always nice when our own cells are put to good use. Type 1 diabetes affects millions of people around the world, but now we may be approaching a cure, thanks to researchers at Tianjin First Central Hospital and Peking University and some human stem cells. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which a person’s pancreas produces insufficient insulin or none at all after the body’s immune system destroys the organ’s islet cells. Without insulin, the body isn’t able to process sugar in the blood, resulting in a host of complications. Once thought to develop only in children, it used to be referred to as juvenile diabetes. However, it’s now known that type 1 diabetes can develop in anyone at any age, and symptoms can come on very suddenly. These include excessive thirst, hunger, and urination, as well as fatigue, mood changes, and blurry vision. The condition is fatal if left untreated, and treatment involves a lifetime dependence on insulin. Even with insulin, though, patients often have to adhere to strict diets and monitor their blood sugar levels. But for one 25-year-old woman in Tianjin, China, the days of walking on medical eggshells may be in the past. Three months after receiving an experimental transplant of reprogrammed stem cells that grew into new islet cells, her pancreas started producing insulin at healthy levels. Now, a year later, she says she no longer needs insulin injections and can eat as she pleases. This comes just a few months after another group of researchers performed a similar procedure to treat type 2 diabetes in a 59-year-old man, also in China. The researchers hope to follow up with the woman in another year or so, and they hope to expand their next trial to 10 to 20 people in order to replicate the results. If it works, it could mean a cure for diabetics all over the world. That’s some heavy lifting for a few tiny cells.

 
[Image description: A row of medical needles in plastic packaging.] Credit & copyright: Tara Winstead, Pexels

That’s not a raccoon…but it’s not too far off from one either. Coatimundis, or coatis, as they’re commonly called, are members of the family Procyonidae, which also includes raccoons. You won’t find these ring-tailed mammals digging through garbage cans, though. Coatis are rainforest dwellers, and some of the things they eat are a lot more dangerous than trash—like tarantulas, for example.
 
Coatis are around the same size as their raccoon cousins, reaching lengths between 33 and 44 inches, and weighing between 4.4 and 15.9 pounds. Active during the day, coatis avoid predators by climbing, which they excel at. In fact, coatis can rotate their ankles more than 180 degrees, allowing them to descend trees headfirst. When they’re on the ground, coatis use their long snouts to overturn logs and dig through fallen leaves to find their favorite foods: fallen fruit, small reptiles, and insects. Prey doesn’t always go down without a fight, though. Coatis sometimes face off against venomous snakes, which they are nimble enough to outmaneuver and kill. Tarantulas present two problems: not only do the spiders have a venomous bite, they’re also covered in irritating hairs that stick into an attacker's skin, causing itching and pain. Tarantulas even kick their own legs in order to disperse the hairs onto potential enemies. Coatis have a novel way of dealing with this. They simply snatch tarantulas from the forest floor and rub the spiders vigorously between the thickened palms of their front feet, or “hands.” This rubs off the irritating hairs and kills the spiders at the same time, making for an easy meal.
 
That’s not to say that coatis are invulnerable. They have plenty of their own predators, from big cats, like jaguars, to birds of prey. To stay safe, coatis use the buddy system…at least for part of their lives. Females live in groups along with their offspring, but males become solitary once they reach sexual maturity. This makes them easier targets for predators, but also makes it easier to spread out and claim territory and females of their own. When you spend your days fighting tarantulas and snakes, it’s understandable to not want to fight amongst yourselves.

 
[Image description: A ring tailed coatimundis sniffing the ground.] Credit & copyright: Vassil, Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes, history isn’t made—it’s grown. Researchers at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, Israel, have brought back an ancient tree from extinction. It’s not just any tree, either: it was once one of the most valuable commodities in the ancient world. The “Judean Balsam,” also known as “the Balm of Judea,” or “Balm of Gilead” was grown in the southern Levant region millennia ago. Its resin had a variety of uses and is referenced in biblical texts as “tsori.” Tsori was written about and traded extensively by the Romans, and was used for everything from perfumes to medicine. However, the tree died out in the Levant at some point, and the identity of the Judean Balsam and its miraculous resin were thought to be lost to time. Yet, in a stroke of luck, a seed belonging to the mysterious tree was discovered in the 1980s in the Judean Desert. The seed, which is approximately 0.8 inches in length, was found safely tucked away in a cave and dates back to sometime between 993CE and 1202CE. Although it was found to be viable, researchers had little success in cultivating it until recently.
 
Now, they finally have a sapling to show for their efforts. The researchers have named the young tree Sheba, and through a DNA analysis, have determined it to belong to a species in the Commiphora family. Researchers can now better understand what its resin was used for. Most notably, compounds found in the tree appear to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. One of the compounds is squalene, an oily substance that is known to protect and smooth skin. Trees in the Commiphora family can be found in other parts of the world and are common in parts of Africa, Madagascar, and the Middle East, but one has never been found in the Levant before. Researchers believe that Judean Balsam may have been grown in the region by grafting parts of grown plants onto rootstock, which would explain why the seeds weren’t found before. Regardless, we certainly aren’t tsori to see it make a comeback.

 
[Image description: A sketch of a branch from the biblical plant known as the “balm of Gilead.”] Credit & copyright: Commiphora gileadensis (L.) C. Chr. (Balm of Gilead, Opobalsam): finished drawing of fruiting branch by Luigi Balugani (1737–1770), Wikimedia Commons. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Public Domain.