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This is a great self-help guide for anyone who is struggling to come up with ideas from nature. This guide walks you through different techniques you can use to see the inspiration in nature. Yes this is for photography, but if you think big picture this is a guide to find inspiration in nature regardless of your end product. Quick Overview: 1)Take a Closer Look 2)Focus on Variety in a Specific Category 3)Stop Studying Plants 4)Explore Different Perspectives 5)Think of Nature in Motion 6)Combine Opposites 7)Spice up the Color 8)Focus Only on Texture 9)Focus Only on Shape 10)Think How You Want the End User to Feel 11)Use Nature-Inspired Culture 12)Illustrate a Scene from Scratch 13)Create an Abstract Composite of Photographs 14)Use your Imagination 15)Reflect on a Place You Love 16)Zoom Out 17)Create an Imaginary World

John, this is an excellent idea. Thanks for sharing. I will definitely save it to share with future courses.

This article is about a low-impact/ permaculture house built in Wales. The house focuses on sustainability and utilizing nature's natural resources. The article lists the materials used for the house and their functions. The house is almost like a giant bird's nest, using "stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc" and hay and straw to insulate the house. It also has solar panels to power lights and electricity, as well has extensive sun windows to let in natural light. I think this article is interesting because without saying it, the builder is mimicking processes in nature in order to live without major technology.

In this TED talk, Ross Lovegrove presents some great points for using nature as inspiration for design. Compared to both Janine Benyus and Robert Full, Ross labels the process of inspiration as "DNA", or "Design, Nature, Art". During the talk, Lovegrove advocates a "fat-free" design process that involves the incorporation of nature's efficient design process into design. He is also very passionate about the organic shape that is found throughout nature and using that shape to build products, and thus use less resources to build it. Although Ross talks of a great way of thinking that needs to be adopted by the industry, the products that he shows in his talk are far from realistic. His water bottle design is far from efficient when compared to the current water bottles already in production and his other designs are extremely expensive. I still believe that his underlying teachings are necessary, but his direction for them is a little off. What do you guys think of him? Are his designs realistic or are they just a way to demonstrate the usefullness of Biomimicry?

Be it that we are nearing the end of the class, I found this video to be a very good summary of what we have covered in the class and what we can take away from it. The video is based upon the new movement of finding design inspiration from nature (Biomimicry). For this specific interview, they focus on an interview with Robert Full to educate the viewer about engineering inspiration from nature. If you remember, Robert Full believes that evolution doesn't necessarily design the perfect mechanism, but rather the mechanism that allows the animal to survive. Therefore, we as humans are able to learn from the abilities of animals gained from evolution and further refine the specific ability to be more efficient and applicable to our needs. The video covers a bunch of the innvoations we have discussed during our time in class including the gecko robot and the running robot RHex. I think this would be a nother great video to show in the beginning of the class for next semester. It presents the general idea of BioInspiration, provides examples of research and application, and also discusses the great importance it will play in the future; building more efficient and useful technology.

I found this 11 minute video when I was looking up information about biomimicry for our Habitat post. Ironically this video has the same speaker from one of our lectures that we watched from moodle. It goes into detail about the history of where and how biomimicry got started, along with an interview with Robert Full that goes into greater detail of the biomimetic experiments that are being done at UC Berkeley. It was really interesting to learn where biomimicry stems from and that scientist havie been using it for many many years.

I found this amazing TED talk by aircraft designer and environmentalist Paul MacCready given way back in 1998. While this talk was given over a decade ago, he talks about the problems that we are facing today. MacCready discusses humans' great advancements in technology and about what we all can do to preserve nature's delicate balance. Here's a great excerpt from the talk that provides a great overview of the topics: "Over billions of years on a unique sphere, chance has painted a thin covering of life: complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly, we humans, a recently arrived species, no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature, have grown in population, technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power. We now wield the paintbrush, and that's serious. We're not very bright. We're short on wisdom; we're high on technology. Where's it going to lead?" - Paul MacCready During his talk he promotes the great potential and future in solar planes, superefficient gliders and the electric car. Its amazing to watch this video and see that we have had this technology for over a decade and it is still not utilized to its full potential. Other than the great information and points made, the presentation of the talk was very entertaining and includes a variety of videos and demonstrations ranging from mini RC aircrafts to ultra light rubberband powered active flyers. Discussing the future of the Earth Paul has a great quote: "I personally think the surviving intelligent life form on earth is not going to be carbon-based; it's going to be silicon-based."

This a great talk on Solar Energy and a new innovative way to improve on our current notion of solar energy. According to Bill Gross, current solar panels that rely on silicon and other materials are still not cost effective enough to be practical. I most cases, it takes more energy to make a solar cell, than it will give out in its entire life. This led to the challenge of finding other ways of making cost-effective solar energy for use in our society. The talk covers Gross's solution of collecting the sun using reflectors to concentrate the energy to a small converter, how to design these reflectors, and what converter would be used to turn this solar energy into usable energy. In order to solve the problem of finding the most effective way of capturing/reflecting the rays of the Sun Gross used Genetic Algorithms. The use of Genetic Algorithms is a powerful way of solving intractable problems using "natural selection". You take a problem that you can't solve with a pure mathematical answer, you build an evolutionary system to try multiple tries at guessing, you add sex - where you take half of one solution and half of another and then make new mutations - and you use natural selection to kill off not as good solutions. This process ultimately led them to some great ideas for reflectors. In order to capture this heat from the solar rays Gross utilizes an advanced Sterling Engine mechanism. In summary, I highly suggest that everyone watch this video and see these alternative methods of capturing and converting solar energy.

An article about how the future will be defined in terms of the development of Biology aspect. Without nature, our life would be less convenient.

Hou In, next time add a little bit more to your annotation. What are the drawbacks of this technology? What types of applications do you envision?

This article is about artificial ant robots that were programmed to find disks that represented food and resources and push the disks to a designated area. The robots also went through artificial natural selection and gene flow. The experiment showed that after about 150 generations, the robots evolved to help each other push the large disks. This evolved altruism was predicted by biologist W.D. Hamilton in 1964 when he was trying to explain why organisms evolve to share time and resources. This could be a very interesting fact to use for future robots, because the robots could work together on a project without human direction.

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.

A great video about applying Biomimicry to Architecture. During the talk Michael Pawlyn discusses the ability to increase resource efficiency, create natural cyclical systems within buildings, and incorporating solar technology into sustainable design. He touches on a number of things we have already discussed like the Nimibian Beetle and the fiber produced by spiders. The video is another great example of how far we are from living in unison with the Earth and how much work still needs to be done. I was always a big fan of TED before this class but after finding all these great talks on Biomimicry I'm going TED crazy!

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.

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.

After the discussion of extending life in class today I remembered reading about recent advancements and claims that have been made about extending the human life. After looking around I found this great article that tracks recent scientific findings and possible "cures". In the quest for longer life, scientists are trying to find the genes of longevity and bottle their benefits for all. However, the purpose of this research is not extreme life span but something they call "health span." Rather than getting certain diseases early in life such as heart disease and other age dependent illness, these illnesses will merely happen much later in life. Aging, after all, is not a disease but a natural process, the accumulation of defects that our bodies simply do not have the wherewithal to repair. A large portion of the article discusses the hypothesis that calorie restriction reduces the creation of toxic molecules called free radicals, which are considered crucial factors in the aging of cells and tissues. Another hypothesis is that calorie restriction decreases the secretion of certain hormones-in particular, insulin and insulin-like growth factor-that signal organisms to channel their resources into either growth and reproduction (when insulin and IGF levels are high) or maintenance and repair (when they are low). The article also discusses the work of Dr. Grey. Dr. Grey believes solving the fight against aging involves dismantling and hauling out the molecular trash while also delivering engineered gene and therapeutic cells to refurbish cells that have died out and gone unreplaced. He believes that other scientists' focus is too small, and it is easier to just clean up the mess rather than mess with pathways and mechanisms. Dr. Grey believes that the possibility of a shot to cure aging is a lot closer than we think.

Exellent review of the paper. And interesting view-point of this Dr. Grey.

I mean: Excellent review ;-)

Hey guys, I found this short little site that has a bunch of cool applications of nature to architecture. Definitely worth your time if you're looking for an interesting read. Enjoy!

This website is all devoted to the applications of shark skin. Great way to use the design in nature to solve the problems we have to use chemicals for. Linked to a solution for boats, but if you explore the website you'll find other ways that this could be used.

In this TED talk Paul Wolpe discusses the current excels in bioengineering and whether there is a line that needs to be drawn. According to Paul, man has undergone three major waves of evolutions: Darwinian Evolution (passive), Civiliization (controlling the evolutionary environment), and Directed Evolution (design). For the first time in history man is intentionally designing and altering the physiological forms that inhabit our planet. In the speech, Paul posses the question of what are the "ground rules" for bioengineering and creating life by depicting the work we have done so far. The majority of food in the supermarket today already has genetically modified aspects of it without clear regulations or identification on the packages. Are the benefits that may come from genetically modifying organisms worth the manipulation of nature? Paul also talks of recent successfull experiments in which scientists have been able to control animals through computer technology. An "Organic Robot". What do you guys think? Is it right for us to modify animals in order to benefit ourselves? Where is the line drawn? This is no longer science fiction, but a reality.

This article involves using natural methods to control pests and prevent them from eating the rice crop. The article does a wonderful job explaining how important rice is in third world countries and worldwide. This article also explains how researchers teamed up to come up with this three step process. The article does not explain the processes in detail, though. All that it says about the actual mechanisms is :The integrated approach involves three key technologies: electronic insect traps that allow growers to estimate the number of insects in rice storage silos, aeration or refrigeration of silos to delay insect development, and 'modified atmosphere' with the use of carbon dioxide or nitrogen gas, again to slow down pest development. This article is interesting and informative on a big picture scale, but not for a detailed article.

Excellent annotation!

This scholarly article discusses the shift in architecture from constructing buildings that "worked with nature" to today's type of buildings that have very little concern for the nature around them. It also addresses the fact that we should try to model our buildings after animals as we once did. Although this article is quite lengthy, it is definitely worth reading. This article really helped me appreciate architecture.

Nice job explaining what we can expect in the article. Exactly what I am looking for in an annotation.

Remember those wheel rolling caterpillars? Well now they are the focus of an robot which they have inspired. The problem is that soft body robots are slow, so for a solution scientist look to nature and found that these caterpillars have amazing speed yet are remarkably quite squishy. By mimicking them they have made advancements to help overcome this problem.