If you haven’t seen Zygote you’re in for a treat, check out the latest issue: Welcome to the fourth issue of Zygote Quarterly, now at our official domain http://zqjournal.org. Articles include: an in-depth look at cephalopods by Tamsin Woolley-Barker a personal view on biomimicry by Adelheid Fischer insights into swarm robotics by Clint Penick Interviews […]
Author Archives: David Fox
Autodesk Design Night – Mother Nature: Celebrity Designer
I attended the December Autodesk Design Night and it was blast. Mark the next one in your diary: February 7th – this time focused on Biomimicry: They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We say it’s a good thing nature never got around to patent protection or today’s designers might be in big […]
Veins Improve Fracture Toughness of Insect Wings
The advantage of veins… Desert locusts are known to travel great distances, experiencing substantial mechanical stress along the way, however little is understood about their wings ability to resist damage during these long flights. Using a tensile test machine, Trinity College researchers Dr. Dirks and Dr. Taylor investigated […]
TCP and The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity
11,000 ant species…so much we can learn: Many dynamical networks, such as the ones that produce the collective behavior of social insects, operate without any central control, instead arising from local interactions among individuals. A well-studied example is the formation of recruitment trails in ant colonies, but many ant […]
Biomimicry at Work – Team Banana
A great case study by Tamsin Woolley-Barker: We need to pull this system of disparate parts together. The sea sponge comes to mind: a porous bag of tissues inside a tough exterior tube. Water draws nutrients through the tube, to be filtered for consumption by the porous bag. Or spider webs, passively filtering insects while the […]
Biomimetic Self-Templating Supramolecular Structures
Another reminder of just how much we still have to learn from nature: In nature, helical macromolecules such as collagen, chitin and cellulose are critical to the morphogenesis and functionality of various hierarchically structured materials. During tissue formation, these chiral macromolecules are secreted and undergo self-templating assembly, a process whereby multiple kinetic factors influence the […]