Design
How to stimulate inspiration
The story of how Velcro came to be has become the stuff of legend. A Swiss electrical engineer named Georges de Mestral went on a hunting trip in the Alps in the early 1940s and noticed how burrs from burdock plants attached to his dog’s fur. He took a closer look, inspiration struck, and the Read More...
Cambridge researchers design world’s largest wooden skyscraper
Cambridge University researchers have presented a plan to build a wooden skyscraper to the London mayor. Responsible sourced wood is considered a renewable building material, as its production is significantly more climate-friendly than other materials. On top of that, CO2 is stored in wood. The Read More...
8 innovations inspired by nature's genius
Many insects secrete a thin, oily film that helps them adhere to surfaces, but the porous surface of the carnivorous pitcher plant holds on to water, rendering such adhesive films useless. Harvard scientists created Slips (slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces), which repels both water and oil, Read More...
Building developing world housing with crowdfunding
A brand-new nonprofit is building homes for those in need in developing countries at a speed unmatched by any other nonprofit. How? Through an unusually transparent approach of handling money from donors. How it works is you watch a video of a specific family, give money to help build that family a Read More...
The greenhouse that acts like a beetle and other inventions inspired by nature
When Brent Constantz, CEO of carbon capture company Blue Planet, was looking for a way to process carbon dioxide emissions, he found inspiration in nature. “Coral reefs and rainforests, the largest natural structures on the planet, are made of carbon,” he says. Reefs, in fact, not only Read More...
Janine Benyus looks to nature for design inspiration
Janine Benyus is the founder of Biomimicry 3.8, a Missoula, Mont.-based design consultancy named not after a version of some proprietary software, but rather the 3.8 billion years nature has been doing its own design “R&D.” The firm is the product of Benyus’s landmark 1997 Read More...
What can the sea snake teach us about Viagra, boat hulls and desalination?
Let’s say you decided to live in the ocean. Can you imagine the challenges you would face? Lot’s of land animals have done exactly that, though the transition from land to sea happens gradually through vast generations of evolutionary time. Whales, seals, manatees, otters, penguins, and Read More...
Inspired by ants, tiny robots can move a 2-ton car
Ants can move mountains together. Researchers have observed that ants get great cooperative force by each using three of their six legs simultaneously. Taking this “biomimicry” example, they have programmed six micro robots, weighing just 3.5 ounces in total, to pull a car weighing 3,900 Read More...
The innovators: the smart plug socket that saves you money and peace of mind
Snuggled up in bed, Yasser Khattak wanted to turn off the light without getting up. It was his lightbulb moment. That teenage frustration gave him the idea for a household plug socket and light switch where the on-off button is flicked remotely via a smartphone, so appliances such as TVs and lights Read More...
High-speed video shows how water lily beetles sprint on water
Water lily beetles are little speed demons, flitting from one pad to another at half a meter (1.6 feet) per second. Now, thanks to a study conducted by Stanford bioengineering assistant professor Manu Prakash and his students, the secret to its mode of flight has been unraveled. Turns out the Read More...