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How much remained in your head? Don't tell Tobias, but I scored only 5/10 :-(

There's one question missing: how many of these designs are claimed to be baised on biomimicry just because this sells?? Tobi, please!

nothing new but nice pictures

waderoush writes "The San Diego Zoo has built a world famous reputation as a tourist destination, for helping to rescue the California Condor, and maybe (if you're old enough) for Joan Embery's appearances with Johnny Carson. Now the zoo is using its expertise to drive innovation by establishing a n...

some biomimicry used in energy systems... maybe it sparks some ideas

not much new that has not been shared here before ... BUT: we have done relativley little on any of them. for good reasons?? don't know - maybe time to look into some of these again more closely Energy Efficiency( Termite mounds inspired regulated airflow for temperature control of large structures, preventing wasteful air conditioning and saving 10% energy.[1] Whale fins shapes informed the design of new-age wind turbine blades, with bumps/tubercles reducing drag by 30% and boosting power by 20%.[2][3][4] Stingray motion has motivated studies on this type of low-effort flapping glide, which takes advantage of the leading edge vortex, for new-age underwater robots and submarines.[5][6] Studies of microstructures found on shark skin that decrease drag and prevent accumulation of algae, barnacles, and mussels attached to their body have led to "anti-biofouling" technologies meant to address the 15% of marine vessel fuel use due to drag.[7][8][9][10] Energy Generation( Passive heliotropism exhibited by sunflowers has inspired research on a liquid crystalline elastomer and carbon nanotube system that improves the efficiency of solar panels by 10%, without using GPS and active repositioning panels to track the sun.[11][12][13] Mimicking the fluid dynamics principles utilized by schools of fish could help to optimize the arrangement of individual wind turbines in wind farms.[14] The nanoscale anti-reflection structures found on certain butterfly wings has led to a model to effectively harness solar energy.[15][16][17] Energy Storage( Inspired by the sunlight-to-energy conversion in plants, researchers are utilizing a protein in spinach to create a sort of photovoltaic cell that generates hydrogen from water (i.e. hydrogen fuel cell).[18][19] Utilizing a property of genetically-engineered viruses, specifically their ability to recognize and bind to certain materials (carbon nanotubes in this case), researchers have developed virus-based "scaffolds" that

"The field of biomimicry mostly involves chemists, engineers and materials scientists. Fewer than 8% of the nearly 300 studies on biomimetics published in the past 3 months and indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science had an author working in a biology department - a crude proxy for 'a biologist'."

Vertical windmills based on fish fins and school swimming behaviour

:)

The device, like dolphins, sends out two pulses in quick succession to allow for a targeted search for semiconductor devices, cancelling any background "noise",

Could it be used to measure ocean acidification? I found a study that links sound wave propagation with ocean acidity. Maybe we are able to do such measurement from space even? "Their paper, "Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH," published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that fossil fuels are turning up the ocean's volume. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the overall pH of the world's oceans has dropped by about 0.1 units, with more of the changes concentrated closer to the poles. The authors found that sound absorption has decreased by 15 percent in parts of the North Atlantic and by 10 percent throughout the Atlantic and Pacific"

The last time I asked an oceanographer for the use of acoustic waves, she said it is still a bit problematic method to take into account its data, but we were referring to measuring ocean circulation. It may be more conclusive for PH measurements, though. The truth is that there is a whole underwater network with pulse emmitters/receivers covering the North Atlantic basin, remnant infrastructure for spying activities in the WW2 and in the cold war, that stays unexploited. We should look more into this idea

shit ... they discovered biomimicry ... what's next?

"We fit data to zonal interaction models and characterize which individual interaction forces suffice to explain observed spatial patterns." You can get the paper from the first author's website: http://people.stfx.ca/rlukeman/research.htm

PNAS? Didnt strike me as sth very new though... We should refer to it in the roots study though: "Social organisms form striking aggregation patterns, displaying cohesion, polarization, and collective intelligence. Determining how they do so in nature is challenging; a plethora of simulation studies displaying life-like swarm behavior lack rigorous comparison with actual data because collecting field data of sufficient quality has been a bottleneck." For roots it is NO bottleneck :) Tobias was right :)

Here they assume all relevant variables influencing behaviour are being observed. Namely, the relative positions and orientations of all ducks in the swarm. So, they make movies of the swarm's movements, process them, and them fit the models to that data. In the roots, though we can observe the complete final structure, or even obtain time-lapse movies showing how that structure came out to be, getting the measurements of all relevant soil variables (nitrogen, phosphorus, ...) throughout the soil, and over time, would be extremely difficult. So I guess a replication of the kind of work they did, but for the roots, would be hard. Nice reference though.

additional information: http://atelierdna.com/?p=144

isn't this a bit of a contradiction: on the one hand: "Based on rough estimates, said Núñez-Ameni the output would be comparable to that of a conventional wind farm covering the same area" and on the other: "After completion, a Windstalk should be able to produce as much electricity as a single wind turbine, with the advantage that output could be increased with a denser array of stalks. Density is not possible with conventional turbines, which need to be spaced about three times the rotor's diameter in order to avoid air turbulence. " still, very interesting concept!

nice biomimetic approach ...

good example of a followup paper taking space into account after one of our studies ....

more for our BMI agenda ....

interesting for biomimetic ideas??