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This article is a very interesting example of biomimicry. It reminds me a lot of how we mimic butterfly wings to produce iridescence. This article talks about how physicist Hui Cao from Yale was inspired by birghtly colored bird feathers to create a new type of laser. Just like butterfly wings, the color on the birds' feathers are the result of texture on a nano scale. These brightly colored birds have organized air pockets that reflect light in a certain way. Cao used this to make air pockets in a thin sheet of gallium arsenide. This proved to be effective in creating a cheap, efficient laser light. While he does not have any applications for this yet, it is a great use of nature to start to solve current problems with technology.

New research shows that birds that are threatened by predators have special coping strategies involving their offspring. In the research when the bird was threatened its offspring were smaller, as expected, but surprisingly the offspring developed faster and grew longer wingspans than the normal sized birds. This seems to be a response to allow the young to fly earlier and faster in more dangerous regions than their counterparts in passive areas. Possible applications for this could be systems that are required to self replicate and adapt to the environment. More research in the way nature conducts this exactly is necessary, but maybe a self-repairing plastic that is aware of its condition knows to grow faster but weaker, or slower and strong depending on the environment. That would be smart, smart plastics.

You know that the bible/religion and evolution can coexist? Don't have to denounce one over the other. Just keep admiring all that is around you.

I found an amazing smart bird robot. It completely and successfully mimic the way birds fly.

This is a pretty short but interesting article about bullet trains in Japan. Although the trains are extremely fast, they were very noisy when coming out of tunnels due to the air pressure difference created when they exited the tunnels at such high speeds. Therefore, engineers designed the nose of the train after the kingfisher's beak because the kingfisher is a bird that can dive into water at high speeds with very little splashing.

Nice find. Next time add a little bit more to your annotation. Do you see any disadvantages to this type of robot? How about applications?

I found this website, it has a compilation of 14 really cool inventions all inspired by mother nature. Take a look and see if something will intrigue you, I spend a few minutes on it and i recommend it. My favorite was the one based off of humans teeth, but you will have to read to find out what teeth can inspire!

Shane, these are great examples. Some of them I had not seen before (and I have seen a large number of "top ten lists"). My favorite thing about the list was the comparison of bird feather color and beer foam...but that may be because I am sitting here all relaxed reading over the IB199 students' musings.