PARIS — Even as
animals and plants face widespread extinction from human-driven causes like
climate change, the natural world continues to inspire scientific discovery in
unexpected ways.
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"Nature has spent
hundreds of millions of years optimizing elegant solutions to extremely
complicated problems," said Alon Gorodetsky, a biomedical engineer at the
University of California, Irvine.
"So if we look to
nature, we can shortcut our development process and get to a valuable solution
right away," he told AFP.
From squid-skin food
warmers to cancer-sniffing ants, here is a selection of this year's scientific
work inspired by nature.
Okra bandages stop
bleeding heartsStopping the bleeding
hearts and livers of dogs and rabbits without stitches may now be possible with
a biodegradable bandage made of sticky okra gel.
Okra is a fuzzy green
vegetable with a slimy texture that inspired Malcolm Xing from Canada's University
of Manitoba to turn it into a medical adhesive.
"Okra is a
fantastic material," said Xing.
In the July study
published in Advanced
Healthcare Materials, researchers discovered that
refining okra in a juicer and then drying it into a powder creates an effective
bio adhesive that quickly creates a physical barrier and starts the blood
clotting process.
The researchers plan
to test this plaster on humans in the coming years.
Robot firefliesFireflies that light
up the night sky inspired scientists at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to create tiny, bug-sized robots that emit light when they fly.
The glowing artificial
muscles help the honey bee-sized robots communicate with each other, which may
make them useful for search and rescue missions someday.
"Nature really is the epitome of innovation and engineering."
Though the robots can
only operate in a
laboratory environment so far, the researchers are excited at
their potential future uses.
Cancer-sniffing
antsThere are an estimated
20 quadrillion ants in the world, and researchers have discovered that one
species might be able to sniff out cancer in human breasts.
In a study conducted
at Sorbonne Paris Nord University and published on the preprint server bioRxiv,
which has not yet been peer-reviewed, scientists used a sugar-water reward to
train ants to smell the difference between mouse urine implanted with, and
without, human tumors.
While dogs can be
trained to use their
super noses to detect cancer, this is expensive and takes
time.
Ants might provide a
cheaper — albeit less cute — alternative.
Squid-skin tea
cosiesThe strange skin of
squids has inspired a packaging material that can keep coffee and food warm for
as long, or as little, as wanted, according to a March study published in
Nature Sustainability.
Researchers discovered that refining okra in a juicer and then drying it into a powder creates an effective bio adhesive that quickly creates a physical barrier and starts the blood clotting process.
Squids have miniature
organs called
chromatophores that can drastically change size, and also help
them change color.
To mimic "these
pigment-filled organs", study co-author Alon Gorodetsky, from the
University of California, Irvine, said they developed "little metal
islands that you could move apart" and contract. The heat level can then be
controlled by how much the material is stretched.
"If you put it
around a warm object — for example, a coffee-filled cup or a hot sandwich — you
can control the rate at which it cools down," he said.
"Nature really is
the epitome of
innovation and engineering," Gorodetsky added.
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