Bionic City

A Miniature Redwood Forest Grows in Brooklyn

A new installation recreates a section of Humboldt County, California, at a 1:100 scale.<p>MetroTech Commons in the middle of downtown Brooklyn is an unlikely site for a redwood forest. Gray buildings rise tall above the busy pedestrian square; on the nearby streets, buses wheeze and car horns sound. …

H.G. Wells on Utopia

Our point of departure for our talk, <i>Biotopia: towards a biological ideal,</i> yesterday... H. G. Wells making a poignant link given the Utopia theme of …

Bats are adapting their hunting strategies to the noise of our cities

Bats are adapting to human noise by changing their hunting strategies, according to a new study. That’s good news for bats, since the number of city-dwellers in the world is expected to increase to 6.5 billion in 2050, from nearly 4 billion today.<p>In noisy environments, instead of relying only on …

Self Portraits: the microbiotic paintings

Traditionally, what we consider to be “self” is usually restricted to the collection of 40 trillion or so eukaryote cells that derive directly from …

Solana Open Aviary | Monetengro Pavillion Venice Biennale 2016

Natural Stone and Resin Table Brings the Beauty of a Starry Night on the Beach Indoors

For Saint Martin-based designer Alexandre Chapelin of LA Table, the Caribbean is a constant source of inspiration. His <i>Lagoon</i> series of tables combine natural stone and resin elements to mimic the pooling seas surrounding him. Now, after one and a half years of research and technical tests, Chapelin …

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Words by Lula Criado (Twitter @lula_clotmag)<p>Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, heat waves, droughts, tornadoes and eruptions are commonly known as …

How science is helping to bring buildings to life

Most of us think of modern buildings as inert structures – the shell for all the activity that goes on inside. Advances in science and technology, …

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A huge, beautiful fold-out map of London's amazing outdoors, produced affordably for everyone | Crowdfunding is a democratic way to support the …

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Insights from the swarm: understanding collective problem-solving using ants and slime mould

Complex systems are those systems that are comprised of a large number of interacting units, such as neurons in a brain, and individual animals in …

Age of the Microzoo

Written by Scott Chimileski and Julie Wolf<p>Figure 1. An entrance to the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam. Photo credit: Scott Chimileski<p>In 3500 BCE, Egyptian …

Tables made of algae? Biofuel by-product transformed into cheap, sustainable material

Exhibition<p>‘Tough but temporary’ is the mantra behind Materialize.X. Unlike a lot of materials used in our buildings, this bio-composite is built to …

Tuning the instrument: Spider webs as vibration transmission structures

Now, a new collaboration between Oxford and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has confirmed that spider webs are superbly tuned instruments for …

As Our Cities Grow Hotter, How Will We Adapt?

Katy Schneider, the former deputy mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, lives near Eastern Parkway, which forms one strand of her city’s necklace of green. Spending time on the leafy boulevard can make Louisville seem deceptively lush and shady, even when midsummer heat bakes the downtown. But about five …

Wildflowers on the verge of disappearing

Orchid-spotters have long-known that the best site in the UK to take in a display of pyramidal orchids is a roadside verge in Warwickshire, yet the role verges play in conservation isn’t widely appreciated. There are almost 251,000 acres of rural road verges across the country that are home to 703 …

police train eagles to snatch unauthorized drones from the sky

police train eagles to snatch unauthorized drones from the sky<p><b>police have joined forces with guard from above, a raptor-training security firm based</b> …

How DNA could store all the world’s data

Modern archiving technology cannot keep up with the growing tsunami of bits. But nature may hold an answer to that problem already.<p>For Nick Goldman, …

LED-lighting influences the activity of bats

Will there be more mosquitoes and other insect nuisances in the future? "Yes, this might be the negative side of it", speculates Voigt. "But there …

Squid, jellyfish and wrinkled skin inspire materials for anti-glare screens and encryption

What do squid and jellyfish skin have in common with human skin? All three have inspired a team of chemists to create materials that change color or …

nature lab presents the work of six british artists at the london design fair 2016

nature lab presents the work of six british artists at the london design fair 2016<p><b>the london design fair 2016 will showcase ‘nature lab’ – a</b> …

Can Hungry Fungi Recycle Lithium Batteries?

Microbes produce organic acids that may help leach out valuable metals

Beyond Terminator: squishy 'octobot' heralds new era of soft robotics

Ditching conventional electronics and power sources, the pliable robot operates without rigid parts.<p>A squishy octopus-shaped machine less than 2 …

New "Bionic" Leaf Is Roughly 10 Times More Efficient Than Natural Photosynthesis

It converts CO2 in the air into alcohol that can be burned as fuel

AA School of Architecture Designs Adaptable Structural Plastic 3D Printing Method

The AA School of Architecture’s DRL Masters Program has developed a thesis project, entitled Growing Systems, which explores adaptable building …

Biohybrid robots built from living tissue start to take shape

Another option is to use more robust cells as actuators. Here at Case Western Reserve University, we've recently begun to investigate this …

Nucleo launches Terra 2.0 grow-it-yourself grass armchair

Italian design collective Nucleo has tweaked its popular design for a grass armchair that grows over time, relaunching it with a crowdfunding …