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This is a pretty interesting article about how sharks navigate and can detect prey using electroreception. However, I would recommend reading just the first three paragraphs, because after that I think it gets a bit repetitive. Basically, hair cells in sharks can sense electric changes (caused by crossing geomagnetic lines or movement of prey) which travel through ions in seawater and then relay this information to the brain.

It's a pretty long article but very worth reading. It talks about several ideas about ideas of new smart fabrics. Some of the ideas are from the biomaterials we talked in class like silk and soft composites. I especially like the innovation of self-dealing fabrics which is inspired by skins and the one inspired by chameleon skin and fish scale. It's cool when you see some ideas you never thought about. Enjoy.

something wrong with the link. I shorten the link here. Hope it works. http://bit.ly/fEHAaH

Personal robots may soon be as cheap and customizable as personal computers.

Hey guys! I found this site and it has several links to some biomimetics and in depth explanations of their inspiration and function. Hope you enjoy!

Welcome to Manuscriptedit.com, your online partner for English language editing, proofreading, medical writing, formatting, design & development and publication support services. We offer a comprehensive manuscript editing service before its submission for publication as well as after acceptance by the peer review process.

This is a short scholarly article that is definitely worth reading. It expands on the Student Teach Presentation for the Stiff Composites group, specifically the resilin aspects. I was really interested in the resilin's applications in dragonfly wings and its "rubber-like" properties, and this article was perfect for further information on it.

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.

Not cutting edge or new research, but yet to be brought forth from what I've seen. This article tells of robots built the size of roaches, not resembling them however, coated with a coattail of chemicals resembling that of real roaches. These robots where then accepted into the swarms and even more surprising were able to influence swarm decisions making. When scurrying for cover the robots ran to well light shelter, counter of nature roach behavior, and was able to get the swarm to follow them. More needs to be researched but this is the beginning of understanding the swarm!

I found a sandy robot inspired by spiders and crabs in IEEE. Their ideas are practical and very likely to be applied in future.

This is a great article that was posted on Twitter by John McCann. Thank you! This relates to the material silk, which is a very useful naturally-made material. In my research, I came across a goat that was able to produce silk proteins in its milk thanks to science, but I never saw this. This article talks about how some researchers have been able to modify silkworms to produce a mix of silkworm/spider silk. This is much more sturdy than silk from a silkworm alone. It is better to be produced by a silkworm, because they are easier to raise and more efficient at producing silk. This is a great article to think about biomimicry.

The star-nosed mole lives mostly underground, and thus has poorly developed eyes. However, this has also given rise to its ultrasensitive nose. It has 11 pairs of appendages on its nose that are covered with over 25,000 mechanoreceptors. This makes its nose 6 times more sensitive than the human hand and the most sensitive organ throughout the animal kingdom.

This study has shown that some primates are possible more self-aware than we are giving them credit for. We knew from before they were able to distinguish themselves in a mirror; by putting paint on them and upon seeing themselves in a mirror attempting to whip it off. However now using different forms of testing we can see that they are very accurate in distinguishing their own actions from what was not their actions. Using a track-pad, a screen and rewards the primates were shown to have around 90% accuracy distinguishing their actions. Possibly understanding other species of self-awareness will help make our robots truly one day self-autonomous, if we so chose.

The "Education" in Scientific American has a lot of experiments that people can do at home with simple materials. The link I share is the science behind a magic show I've seen before. After the practice, they have some questions like "What is the slowest you can pull the loop away and still have the coin fall into the container? What happens when you use a bigger or smaller paper loop?"

South American electric knifefish are a leading model system within neurobiology. Recent efforts have focused on understanding how they move, and how that relates to how their brain controls movement. Knifefish swim by means of an undulatory fin that runs most of the length of their body, affixed to the belly. Using this fin enables the fish to stay relatively straightforward, making them different from sharks in this regard. The results of this experiment show that there is an optimal operational region in the fin's kinematic parameter space, when the fin is used in conjunction with a robot.

more on insect robots  

Can you "annotate" or "describe" this website a little bit more? What did you like about it, did it give you any ideas? The website of course promotes the HML (I like the logo?) but are there any weaknesses in their design - yes, the flying robot is very small - but it is no where near autonomous. So, try to convince your classmates to go visit the site by annotating it. And also see the annotation as a way for you remember in 1 year what you liked about the site , to determine it if is worth visiting again.

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

Well this is the end of the semester and I thought that its time to wrap up the class so I am posting an article that I think wraps up this term very nicely. Enjoy.

This is a site full of fascinating innovations that have been inspired by life, the first and most interesting, in my opinion, is a breathing apparatus that draws air from the water like a fishes gills.

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.

This article descibes the process by which green sulphur bacteria capture and store light energy. I thought that it was interesting because it relates bacteria to quantum physics, which is a connection we don't see to often.