biomimicry
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Scientists build energy-efficient computer out of crabs
Here is an amazing example of humans piggybacking on a natural phenomenon to create an incredibly clever system: crab-based computing. A crab-based computer starts with swarms of crabs. These swarms include hundreds of thousands of crabs that, individually, run every which way but that, as a group, progress in one direction. Even more incredible — […]
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Gecko-inspired adhesive lets your TV cling to the wall like a lizard
With its Tom Cruise-like talent for scattering straight up walls, the gecko has become one of biomimicry’s favored muses. Studying its feet, scientists have come up with a variety of gecko-inspired tapes, but now a team at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst has developed a stronger adhesive patch they’re calling “Geckskin.” A piece of the stuff […]
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Solar panels made out of grass clippings
An MIT scientist has developed a quick and dirty way to harness solar power using “anything green, even grass clippings.” So basically, solar panels made out of yard waste. This technology is way, way, way, way below the efficiency of commercial solar panels: It converts 0.1 percent of solar energy into power. Commercial solar panels […]
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Sunflowers show how to capture solar energy more efficiently
In design, biomimicry -- the idea that nature does design best -- is all the rage. So it must have been a head-slapping "duh" moment when solar-power designers sought inspiration from sunflowers -- a plant that has "sun" in its name, for goodness' sake! It turns out that sunflowers are really good at using the sun (NO WAY), and mimicking their structure can allow designers to seriously reduce the size of concentrating solar power farms.