Search results for "Biomimetics"
showing 10 items of 54 documents
Applying Biomimicry to Cities: The Forest as Model for Urban Planning and Design
2021
International audience; The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possible by this model in the fields of urban planning, urban water systems, urban energy and transport systems, and urban food and nutrient systems.
Types of Mimetics for the Design of Intelligent Technologies
2019
Mimetic design means using a source in the natural or artificial worlds as an inspiration for technological solutions. It is based around the abstraction of the relevant operating principles in a source domain. This means that one must be able to identify the correct level of analysis and extract the relevant patterns. How this should be done is based on the type of source. From a mimetic perspective, if the design goal is intelligent technology, an obvious source of inspiration is human information processing, which we have called cognitive mimetics. This article offers some conceptual clarification on the nature of cognitive mimetics by contrasting it with biomimetics in the context of in…
A new twist on sea silk : the peculiar protein ultrastructure of fan shell and pearl oyster byssus
2018
11 pages; International audience; Numerous mussel species produce byssal threads - tough proteinaceous fibers, which anchor mussels in aquatic habitats. Byssal threads from Mytilus species, which are comprised of modified collagen proteins - have become a veritable archetype for bio-inspired polymers due to their self-healing properties. However, threads from different species are comparatively much less understood. In particular, the byssus of Pinna nobilis comprises thousands of fine fibers utilized by humans for millennia to fashion lightweight golden fabrics known as sea silk. P. nobilis is very different from Mytilus from an ecological, morphological and evolutionary point of view and …
A spiking network for body size learning inspired by the fruit fly
2013
The concept of peripersonal space is an interesting research topics for psychologists, neurobiologists and for robotic applications. A living being can learn the representation of its own body to take the correct behavioral decision when interacting with the world. To transfer these important learning mechanisms on bio-robots, simple and efficient solutions can be found in the insect world. In this paper a neural-based model for body-size learning is proposed taking into account the results obtained in experiments with fruit flies. Simulations and experimental results on a roving platform are reported and compared with the biological counterpart.
Adaptive Materials Research for Architecture
2018
The volume "Adaptive Materials Research for Architecture" is a Special Issue of the journal "Advanced Material Research". The goal of this volume is to spread knowledge on studies, analyses and results of scientific research carried out from academics, researchers, and scientists regarding the soundest issues related to smart materials, innovative technologies and ongoing researches in the field of adaptive materials in past and current architectural practice.
Exploiting Imperfections in Perception-Action Learning
2019
In this paper a some examples of simulations and experiments performed in the last few years in the field of bio-inspired robotics are reviewed and revisited, deepening their characteristics and emphasising the role of imperfections that could be the main actors guiding their success in real environment. Our cases of study rely on both geetic and behavioral experiments on the fruit fly, from which models, simulations and robotic experiments were performed.
A pH-tunable nanofluidic diode: electrochemical rectification in a reconstituted single ion channel.
2006
We report pH-dependent electrochemical rectification in a protein ion channel (the bacterial porin OmpF) reconstituted on a planar phospholipid membrane. The measurements performed at single-channel level show that the electric current is controlled by the protein fixed charge and it can be tuned by adjusting the local pH. Under highly asymmetric pH conditions, the channel behaves like a liquid diode. Unlike other nanofluidic devices that display also asymmetric conductance, here the microscopic charge distribution of the system can be explored by using the available high-resolution (2.4 A) channel crystallographic structure. Continuum electrostatics calculations confirm the hypothesized bi…
Novel atrazine-binding biomimetics inspired to the D1 protein from the photosystem II of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
2020
Biomimetic design represents an emerging field for improving knowledge of natural molecules, as well as to project novel artificial tools with specific functions for biosensing. Effective strategies have been exploited to design artificial bioreceptors, taking inspiration from complex supramolecular assemblies. Among them, size-minimization strategy sounds promising to provide bioreceptors with tuned sensitivity, stability, and selectivity, through the ad hoc manipulation of chemical species at the molecular scale. Herein, a novel biomimetic peptide enabling herbicide binding was designed bioinspired to the D1 protein of the Photosystem II of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The D1…
Cognitive Mimetics for Designing Intelligent Technologies
2018
Design mimetics is an important method of creation in technology design. Here, we review design mimetics as a plausible approach to address the problem of how to design generally intelligent technology. We argue that design mimetics can be conceptually divided into three levels based on the source of imitation. Biomimetics focuses on the structural similarities between systems in nature and technical solutions for solving design problems. In robotics, the sensory-motor systems of humans and animals are a source of design solutions. At the highest level, we introduce the concept of cognitive mimetics, in which the source for imitation is human information processing. We review and discuss so…
Biomimetic Mn-catalases based on dimeric manganese complexes in mesoporous silica for potential antioxidant agent
2015
Two new structural and functional models of the Mn-catalase with formula [{Mn(III)(bpy)(H2O)}(μ-2-MeOC6H4CO2)2(μ-O){Mn(III)(bpy)(X)}]X, where X = NO3 (1) and ClO4 (2) and bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine, were synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffraction. In both cases, a water molecule and an X ion occupy the monodentate positions. The magnetic properties of these compounds reveal a weak antiferromagnetic behavior (2J = -2.2 cm(-1) for 1 and -0.7 cm(-1) for 2, using the spin Hamiltonian H = -2J S1·S2) and negative zero-field splitting parameter DMn (-4.6 cm(-1) and -3.0 cm(-1) for 1 and 2, respectively). This fact, together with the nearly orthogonal orientation of the Jahn-Teller axes of the M…