Clippings

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Title Teaser Post date All terms Value
Coral could hold key to sunscreen pill

Researchers led by Dr. Paul Long from King's College London have identified how coral protects itself and its symbiotic algae from harmful solar ultraviolet light. 

"What we have found is that the algae living...

2011/08/31 - 10:32
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IBM's New Chips Compute More Like We Do

Researchers at IBM led by Dharmendra Modha have developed a custom chip called a "neural core" that mimics two aspects of brains:

  • close proximity of processing and memory functions, by laying 45-...
2011/08/18 - 10:22
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Schools of fish help squeeze more power from wind farms

A team at Caltech led by John O. Dabiri (Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering) has been testing vertical axis wind turbines in configurations where the positioning of the turbines...

2011/08/11 - 09:39
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Nature's spring: Cod bounce back

The BBC article by Richard Black references the recent Nature paper...

2011/07/29 - 11:56
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Could Cows Make Biofuels Better?

Currently, large quantities of expensive enzymes are required to convert cellulose into sugars that can then be fermented to make biofuels.  A number of species such as termites and ruminants eat wood or grass and therefore have the same...

2011/01/30 - 13:15
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How Fruit Flies Could Improve Wireless Networking

A team of researchers in Israel and the US studied the role of "sensory organ precursors" in the development of the nervous system of fruit flies.  These organs act as local neural network 'leaders' to facilitate parallel processing.  They...

2011/01/18 - 11:50
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Peregrine Falcons Inspire New Thermal Soaring Strategy for UAVs

This post describes how pilots and birds exploit thermals (rising columns of air) to reduce the energy required to stay airborne.  Designers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are particularly interested in exploiting thermals due to the limited...

2010/12/07 - 11:09
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World’s first biomimetic color-changing humidity sensor

Professors Lee Seung-yop and Park Jeong-yeol (Sogang University’s School of Mechanical Engineering) have developed a humidity sensor that requires no power supply or electronic circuitry.  The design was inspired by the Hercules beetle of South...

2010/10/11 - 17:43
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Biomimicry of butterfly wing scale structure could cut bank fraud

Mathias Kolle, working with Professor Ullrich Steiner and Professor Jeremy Baumberg of the University of Cambridge, studied the Indonesian Peacock or Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio blumei), whose wing scales are composed of...

2010/06/07 - 08:20
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Shell shock

Holding up an abalone shell before a visitor, [Prof. Angela] Belcher describes the moment when the two threads--persistent interest and sudden insight--came together...

2008/03/11 - 11:18
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randomness