Bionic City
By Melissa Sterry | Biomimetics, Biotechnology & Biology for the Built Environment
Spider Silk Turns Bionic Through Nanomaterials - GrapheneEntrepreneur.com - Graphene News & Latest Graphene Uses
Researchers have transformed spider silk through the addition of new materials designed to increase the strength of webbing by up to three times.<p>This …
EngineeringImagine an "ecological certification" for urban design. What are such a certification's key elements?
<i>Every month we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.</i><p><b>List of writers</b><p><i>Hover</i> …
SustainabilityElephants Will Have a Say in Mapping Kenya’s Future
Elephant movement data is helping the Kenyan government site big development projects.<p>If we could all be a bit more “elephant,” there might be fewer …
WildlifeResearchers Successfully Code Malware Into DNA
Every Bit of Information<p>In a feat that seems straight out of science fiction, a team of “biohackers” managed to successfully infect a computer with a …
DNAEarthworm-inspired pavilion stages concerts and light shows in Latvia's floodplains
Didzis Jaunzems Architecture has built a circular pavilion for open-air music and lighting performances, designed to be reminiscent of an earthworm's …
LatviaLearning new tricks from sea sponges, nature's most unlikely civil engineers
Imagine a future in which buildings tower miles over the streets below, tourists take day trips to the edge of our atmosphere, and multiple space …
EngineeringFESTO BionicANTs-Cooperative Behaviour Based on a Natural Model
By Festo<b>BionicANTs-Highly integrated individual systems to solve a common task</b> <br>With one eye for detail and the other on the big picture: for the …
RoboticsMicrobes have their own version of the internet
Creating a huge global network connecting billions of individuals might be one of humanity’s greatest achievements to date, but microbes beat us to …
Internet of ThingsGreen Roofs Are Saving Birds and Hatching Bird-Watchers
When landscape architects attract flocks to urban centers, city dwellers are keen to look up.<p>Urban development hasn’t always accommodated birds. Window collisions due to reflective glass and bright lights have hurt migrating bird populations wherever there are skyscrapers, with the American Bird …
BirdsWe’ve Used Up The World’s Resources For The Year And It’s Only August
Earth Overshoot Day is here again, earlier than ever.<p>Does something feel different about the world today? Is Mercury in retrograde? It’s not. Rather, it may be that you can sense that the world has outstripped its annual resources, well before the year is over. We’re now living on extra resources …
SustainabilityA Wall in the Wild: The Disastrous Impacts of Trump's Border Wall on Wildlife
Trump's border wall will be a deathblow to already endangered animals on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. This report examines the impacts of …
WildlifeSpeculative Biology in Art: How will Life Look like in the Future?
<b>The first solo exhibition of Turkish artist Pinar Yoldas imagines a future where biology is shaped by climate change and plastic pollution.</b><p>Last week …
Biology“Bio-Prospectors” Are Studying Living Organisms for Signs of Useful Substances
Prospects of Bio-Prospecting<p>When people hear about prospecting, they might imagine old forty-niners (miners) with pickaxes hunting for gold, or maybe …
BiologyLight pollution can foil plant-insect hookups, and not just at night
For flowers, too much light at night could lead to a pollination hangover by day.<p>Far from any urban street, researchers erected street lights in …
PollinationSteve Harries takes us from stem to stem in a new series of botanical Polaroids
In the mid-19th century, Anna Atkins – a botanist and photographer from Kent – published the first book with photographs as illustrations, in a guide to British algae, ferns and flowering plants.<p>Some 160 years later and the relationship between botany, books and photography hasn’t wilted: …
FlowersHow Legendary Computer Scientist Alan Turing Described Nature's Beauty With Numbers
Sunflower<p>History knows him as the man who outsmarted Nazi cryptographers, only to be chemically castrated and driven to suicide by the country he helped save. But in the final years of his life, even as he faced a criminal trial for being gay, Alan Turing turned his mathematical genius to one of …
MathematicsStoring data in DNA brings nature into the digital universe
Humanity is producing data at an unimaginable rate, to the point that storage technologies can’t keep up. Every five years, the amount of data we’re …
DNAScientists use laser beams to turn simple crystals into transparent electronics
Why it matters to you<p>Optically drawn electronics could make for some innovative new circuit designs, potentially allowing them to be rewritten in the …
EngineeringDNA Logic Gets Much Faster
Technique for organizing DNA molecules closer together on chip boosts processing speeds Illustration: Nature NanotechnologyMicrosoft has taken quite …
BiologyThese Amazing Maps Show How Wildlife Will Migrate to Survive Climate Change
For most animals, adapting to climate change won’t mean evolving new ways to stay cool—they’ll just pick up and move to cooler habitats. It’s how the …
Climate ChangeBio-inspired wind turbines with flexible blades are 35% more efficient
Wind energy already yields four percent of Earth’s power, but five researchers at French institutions recently drew inspiration from nature to make …
Building Codes for Bacterial Cities
Biofilms are bacterial fortresses, but understanding how hydrodynamics and competition shape their architecture could reveal their subtle …
BiologyRookies
Supported by some of the biggest names in the creative industries, The Rookies is the world's leading international annual competition for young, up …
Greenwich, UKFive shifts to begin a new story for energy
In May 2017, Forum for the Future and SmartestEnergy held a global online conversation asking: How might we design an energy system inspired by life? …
Renewable EnergyProgramming cells with computer-like logic
Novel RNA nano-devices in living cells can sense and analyze multiple complex signals for future synthetic diagnostics and therapeutics<p>By Benjamin …
BiologyHow Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
The evolutionary biologist Jessica Flack seeks the computational rules that groups of organisms use to solve problems.<p>There are many patterns of …
BiologyFinally: An App That Can Identify the Animal You Saw on Your Hike
Take a photo of a mystery critter using your cellphone, and iNaturalist will try to tell you what it is.<p>The legendary naturalist John Muir once wrote: “Whenever I met a new plant, I would sit down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance, hear what it had to tell.” The first step …
NatureLiving computers: RNA circuits transform cells into nanodevices
Scientists have demonstrated how living cells can be induced to carry out computations in the manner of tiny robots or computers.
Biology3D printed moth antennae uses smell to detect drugs and explosives
In a life-critical situation man-made sensors can take minutes to detect the presence of gas or explosives in the air. A moth however is able ...
3D Printing