Some forms of plankton and bacteria have the ability to build an extra natural layer of nanoparticle-like armor. That ability has inspired chemists at the University of Warwick to create a remarkably simple way to give drug bearing polymer vesicles (microscopic polymer based sacs of liquid) their own armored protection. The technology could be used… »
Inspired by the hair-thin holdfast fibers that mussels secrete to stick against rocks, researchers from the University of Chicago managed to manufacture a synthetic version of the self-healing sticky substance used by mussels. The substance could be used as an adhesive or coating for underwater machinery or in biomedical settings as a surgical adhesive or… »
Researchers at Northwestern University have created a robotic fish that can move from swimming forward and backward to swimming vertically almost instantaneously by using a ribbon-like fin inspired by the black ghost knifefish – a night fish that lives in rivers of the Amazon basin. It hunts for prey using a weak electric field around… »
The fruit fly has evolved a method for arranging the tiny, hair-like structures it uses to feel and hear the world. A team of researchers in Israel and at Carnegie Mellon University were inspired by that method and they think it could be used for more effectively deployed wireless sensor networks, such as environmental monitoring,… »
If nothing else, the world around us had much more time to shape itself to the current layout we can see around us. By learning from nature, and implementing those ideas, we can improve the efficiency of current designs and technologies, or even come up with new technologies just by mimicking nature. Biomimicry has been… »
In order to survive in a tumultuous environment, sea urchins literally eat through stone. Sea urchins use their teeth to carve out nooks where they hide from predators and protect themselves from the waves. Despite constant grinding and scraping on stone, urchin teeth never get dull. This ability has puzzled scientists for decades, but researchers… »
Researchers from the University of Greenwich are using ethical synthetic biology to create “living” materials that could be used to clad buildings and absorb the CO2 from the air. In collaboration with an architectural practice and a building materials’ manufacturer, the idea is to use protocells – bubbles of oil in an aqueous fluid sensitive… »
The ability of elephant’s trunk to be flexible, transmit large forces, and serve as a precise gripping tool, has inspired researchers to come up with the Bionic Handling Assistant. It was developed by Festo in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) and within the framework of the Bionic Learning Network… »
