A toc of a spcial issue on synthetic biology: How to assemble organisms from scratch. Could one day be intersting for large scale deterministic self assembly or some other crazy idea...
Unfortunately in German: A frog which is able to survive for years in the mud by using a technique calle Mitochondriatic coupling. And I should have gone to that conference!
Europe is less far and there is also an ocean beneath the surface (at least we think...), and it's bigger. Nasa planned a mission to Europe some years ago but it was cancelled because of budget cut because of... war in Irak !
The diverse mechanisms described here have been employed by animals to generate materials with stiffness values that span an impressive eleven orders of magnitude.
The biomechanics of serpentine locomotion have been examined. Apparently it is very similar to legged locomotion. In the unlikely case ESA wants to build a serpentine robot, this paper should be a first read.
This is about biological and technical hygromorphs, i.e. structures that change shape according to humidity. Next to pine cones, there is also a cool study on wheat awns which drill themselves into the soil just by daily variance of air humidity. biomimetics would be passively controlled acutators or humidity driven valves in space station to open/close dehumidification devices.
Not yet. There is also some other nice mechanism of wheat awns and how they use changes in humidity to anchor in soil. Would maybe fit with the above mentioned work of oisin.