Biomimetics

"Engineers are increasingly taking a leaf out of nature's book when looking for solutions to design problems."

Dr. Vincent has devised a smart fabric, inspired by the way in which pine cones open and close depending on the humidity, that could be used to make clothing that adjusts to changing body temperatures and keeps the wearer cool.

Biomimetics still depends far too heavily on serendipity, says Dr Vincent…“To be effective, biomimetics should be providing examples of suitable technologies from biology which fulfil the requirements of a particular engineering problem,” he explains. That is why he and his colleagues, with funding from Britain's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, have spent the past three years building a database of biological tricks which engineers will be able to access to find natural solutions to their design problems. A search of the database with the keyword “propulsion”, for example, produces a range of propulsion mechanisms used by jellyfish, frogs and crustaceans.

Via Political Theory

Via the same, this. The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the potentially interesting topics of gradients, entropy, dynamism, various intriguing matters (as on other occasions, you out there know who you are…)