Curio Cabinet / Daily Curio

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 
Where there's a wheel, there's a way. Upon setting out on the first road trip across the continental U.S. in May 1903, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker couldn't possibly have anticipated all the bumps they'd encounter along the way. It all began with a wager in San Francisco; Jackson had recently accepted a $50 bet that he couldn't drive across the country in 90 days. No one else had ever successfully completed a cross-country car trip before, and with barely any driving experience, Jackson was an unlikely candidate to break the streak. But before he knew it, the retired physician had purchased a used Winton car, recruited Crocker (a trained mechanic), and embarked on the journey.
 
America's first great road trip had more than its fair share of mishaps. The first one came just 15 miles in when one of the car's rear tires blew, forcing Jackson and Crocker to replace it with their only spare. The not-so-trusty Vermont—named after Jackson's home state—would again need tire replacements after enduring the northwestern mountain terrain. At points, the driving duo relied on the help of other modes of transportation; a cowboy and his horse offered a tow when their engine broke down, and Crocker took a detour on a rented bicycle to fetch gas. They lost numerous valuables, including several pairs of glasses, Jackson's coat (and the cash within it), and cooking tools. Then, there was the 108-mile detour they took when a woman purposely gave them wrong directions so they would pass by her hometown and allow her family to witness an automobile for the first time.
 
But it wasn't all bad. When Jackson and Crocker's misadventures took them through Idaho, they picked up an endearing third wheel: Bud the pitbull. The canine was even outfitted with his own set of protective goggles to keep out dust and complete his road-trippin' look. Against the odds, the roadworn trio arrived in New York City on July 26, 1903, completing the 4,500-mile journey from California in 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes. (The faithful Vermont, despite barely surviving the ordeal, is now permanently preserved at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.) It's the perfect humbling tale to break out next time the kids ask "are we there yet?"

In 2015, scientists were certain that the main purpose of zebra stripes was to regulate temperature. Now a study published earlier this month in PLOS ONE paints a different picture. Believing the stripes might work as an insect repellent, Japanese researcher Tomoki Kojima and his cohort set about painting cows to look like zebras. Over two years, they conducted three separate experiments where they painted three cows. It took them just five minutes to slather each bovine in non-toxic paint, but three days to adequately observe the astonishing effects. The stripes reduced the incidence of biting flies landing on the cows by 50 percent! The researchers believe this is because the stripes scramble the flies' motion detection systems. This is huge, considering its potential impact on the cattle industry and climate change. Swarms of biting flies pester cows relentlessly, causing the animals to graze, eat, and sleep less, as well as bunch together in anxiety and kick out at one another on accident. Currently, biting flies indirectly cost the cattle industry around $2.2 billion annually. Adding stripes to cows could theoretically cut those losses down, and also reduce the need for pollutive pesticides on livestock ranches. The use of zebra stripes is an incredible find—but it's not exactly news to body-painted, indigenous tribes in Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia. Scientists are discovering, in hindsight, that the tribes have known the fly-repelling qualities of white stripes for some time now. Chalk it up as another win for the wisdom of aboriginal humans and another failure of "modern" society to notice. Personally, I can't wait to try this out at the next barbecue!
 

Image credit & copyright: Tomoki Kojima/Plos One
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Wow. World War I came to a close 100 years ago yesterday. War was a very different endeavor a century ago. Supporting the encampment and movement of millions of ground troops was the biggest challenge. In the trenches, one of the most important technologies was bandages. Disease, infection, and sepsis killed far more soldiers than actual battle wounds. As early as December 1915—nearly three years before the end of the war—the Allied Forces began to run out of bandages to treat the wounded, thanks to a shortage of cotton. Field doctors tried irrigating wounds with carbolic acid, formaldehyde, even mercury chloride. But without cotton bandages to keep things clean, the wounds would get infected again. Which is how a moss called sphagnum ended up saving the war effort for the Allies. Commonly found in the peat bogs of Northern Europe, sphagnum was already known as a preservative for ancient human remains like the Tollund Man. And some anthropologists suspected ancient Gaelic-Irish warriors had used it to pack their wounds 1,000 years ago. So a Scottish botanist and a military surgeon began experimenting with different types of moss, identifying two species native to Great Britain that worked well for battlefield wounds: S. papillosum and S. palustre. Not only did they find the plant's cellular structure could absorb fluid equalling 22 times its own weight, but a sugar molecule made the cell walls negatively charged. This attracted nutrients while creating a low pH level around the wound, inhibiting bacterial growth. In other words, it was the perfectly absorbent and sterile bandage material (later also used for sanitary napkins). Allied governments launched civic efforts to collect moss across British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and the United Kingdom. "Moss drives" were announced in newspapers, with volunteer women and children filling giant sacks. By 1918, one million moss bandages were being sent to the Allied front lines every month. It turns out the botanist and surgeon "discoverers" knew the Germans had been using moss bandages for decades. The scientific article they eventually wrote about their discovery concluded: Fas est et ab hoste doceri: it is right to be taught even by the enemy.
 

Image credit & copyright: Natural Museum of American History
 

Monarch caterpillars are remarkable creatures. They eat entire milkwood leaves within the span of five minutes, increasing their weight by 2,700 times. What makes that feat truly impressive is milkwood's toxicity. Its goopy inner latex contains cardiac glycosides, a steroid that causes most animals to vomit. The monarch's resistance to the toxin has been a long-standing mystery. But recently, biologists at the UC Berkeley recreated this trait in fruit flies. Using CRISPR, they made three slight mutations in a single gene, to change the way certain molecular pumps work in the flies. These pumps moderate the flow of ions in cells; in most animals, they get clogged by milkweed's toxic steroid. The genetically modified flies, however, were 1,000-times more resistant to it. Which should scare you, because monarchs eat milkweed to make themselves inedible to birds, bats, and other predators. Theoretically, we could have a super-fly menace on our hands if the mutants ever escaped the lab. Except that eating milkweed is a fine art, and monarchs are experts at it. Firstly, monarch caterpillars nibble milkweed leaves in a careful pattern. This is because the latex pulp that oozes from each leaf is viscous and deadly—so sticky it permanently traps insects. Secondly, milkweed is covered in fussy hairs that must be cropped before feeding. Finally, monarchs' brilliant orange and black color scheme is necessary to broadcast their toxicity to birds. So take a deep breath: the fruit fly apocalypse won't be happening in the near future. Unless some asinine scientists use CRISPR to give them shiny orange wings!
 

Image credit & copyright: Marcia Straub/Getty Images
 

With so much going on in the world, it's easy to forget the BP oil spill took place nearly a decade ago. At the time, we were warned of the myriad environmental consequences of four million barrels of oil entering the Gulf of Mexico. Only now are we learning the true extent of the damage. According to a 2017 expedition recently published in Royal Society Open Science, the depths of the Gulf of Mexico were desolated by oil slicks. The seafloor, typically coated in white marine snow, has been reduced to a lifeless toxic wasteland. Gone are the sea cucumbers and isopods. All that remains are haggard crabs and shrimp with tumor-swollen claws, missing legs, and blighting parasites. While all other animals either died or fled from the area, these sickly crustaceans are drawn to compounds in the oil slicks, which are similar to those naturally occurring on their bodies. There were nearly eight times more crabs located beneath the oil spill site than other areas plumbed by the expedition. Fortunately, the researchers believe the worst is behind the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, the co-author of the study, Clifton Nunnally, remains sober. "We can't allow this heavily impacted disaster site to slip from our collective memory," he noted, stressing the need for further research. He and others hope to facilitate or expedite the seafloor's recovery, but find themselves at a loss, since deep-sea ecosystems are mysterious, delicate, and far-reaching. If we're careless, we could end up like those poor crabs in time. Or one of those crabs could mutate into a real-world, crustacean Godzilla, and we'd really be sorry. Actually, maybe then people would pay proper attention to this environmental tragedy!
 

Image credit & copyright: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Last month NASA released an animated GIF of the moon passing in front of Earth. It looks like a badly faked video--and the Internet exploded with conspiracy claims--but the photos are real, taken from a spacecraft a million miles from Earth. Since the craft is positioned between the sun and the moon, once a month the moon passes by, with the Earth as the backdrop. What's really cool is that the photos provide Earth-bound viewers with a perspective of the lunar surface we never see. Pink Floyd fans know it as the “dark side of the moon.” Except it isn't dark at all. It gets sunlight every day. The correct term is the "far side" of the moon. But because the moon’s rotation syncs perfectly with its orbit around the Earth, it’s physically impossible to see its far side without a space camera. The moon is a tidally locked celestial object, which means it takes exactly the same time to rotate around the axis as it does around its partner celestial object--in this case the Earth. So while the moon does rotate, the same side of the moon is always turned towards us. Hence the myth that the other side is "dark." The two hemispheres have very different appearances, with 32% of the near side covered with “lunar maria,” or dark plains visible to the naked eye. Interestingly, only 1% of the far side is covered by maria. This isn’t the first time humans have photographed the far side of the moon. A Russian spacecraft took photos in 1959, and NASA’s Deep Impact satellite did so in 2008. But this is the first time the photos have been animated, and it’s amazing to watch! Click below to see for yourself.

Big Bug isn't going down without a fight. Last week, a team of Yale researchers announced that their attempt to gene-hack mosquitoes to make them impotent failed catastrophically. Their effort began in 2013, in response to soaring mosquito populations spreading dangerous pathogens, such as the brain-infecting EEEV virus, from Brazilian swamps as far north as Florida. They released 450,000 nonnative, gene-hacked mosquitoes into Jacobina, Brazil. The males in this population were supposedly given a gene that caused them to produce weak, infertile offspring. For a while, it worked. The native population nosedived. Then, 18 months later, the Yale researchers noticed something unexpected: the mosquito population made a complete rebound. The most disconcerting part? They discovered that the native skeeters had successfully bred with their gene-hacked brethren, creating a new line of hybrid mosquitoes. Somehow the altered specimens—a combination of Cuban and Mexican varieties—had survived to adulthood, breeding and diversifying the natives' gene pool. Now Brazilian mosquitoes are more resilient than ever. It's an unfortunate prospect. But even though the researchers lost the battle, they hope findings from their failure will lead to the next plan of attack. Meanwhile, we'll just have to itch with anticipation, and hope some gene-hacked mosquitoes give us superpowers.
 

Image credit & copyright: Deposit Photos
 

You should find this illuminating. Last week, a team of UCLA materials scientists revealed a new method for generating electricity from darkness—the nighttime equivalent of solar power. Their study, published in the online journal Joule, utilized a process called radiative sky cooling. The term refers to how heat rises from the Earth's surface, especially on clear nights, and dissipates into cool air before passing through the atmosphere. This escaping heat manifests as thermal radiation, which the UCLA researchers, led by Aaswath Raman, set out to harness. Using just $30 to purchase supplies, they coupled an eight-inch aluminum disk with thermoelectricity generators. The disk acted as an emitter, steadily radiating heat up towards the sky while the thermoelectric generators converted the subsequent changes in temperature into electric voltage. The device was first tested in Stanford, California, on a cold, cloudless night in 2017. It produced 25 milliwatts per square meter of the disk, or enough to keep a single LED light bulb powered. But this was just a mock-up. The UCLA team believes that with better materials and a more ideal climate, their device could currently generate 500 milliwatts per square meter, or enough to charge a smartphone. Larger versions of Raman's gadget might even be able to power homes. And while radiative sky cooling doesn't hold a candle to solar power yet—which is presently 100-times more efficient—the two could certainly complement each other as renewable energy resources. I say we invest in Raman's work and see where it takes us. It could be a much-needed light in the darkness!
 

Image credit & copyright: Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images