Beak shape variation in Darwin's finches is a classic example of evolutionary adaptation, with beaks that vary widely in proportions and shape, reflecting a diversity of ecologies. While living birds have a beak to manipulate ...
Archaeology
Jan 7, 2013
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The strong, flapping flight of bats offers great possibilities for the design of small aircraft, among other applications. By building a robotic bat wing, Brown researchers have uncovered flight secrets of real bats: the ...
Robotics
Feb 21, 2013
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Dr. Zhi-Liang Zheng, a biology professor and plant scientist in the Department of Biological Science, published a paper last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that demonstrates a connection ...
Biotechnology
Dec 30, 2016
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413
(Phys.org) —Mechanical Engineering Professor Lih-Sheng (Tom) Turng has a simple office demonstration of how shape-memory polymers work. He takes the material, which is formed into a compact flower bud, drops the bud in ...
Polymers
Nov 22, 2013
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Likely to survive in the oral cavity, bacteria have evolved to divide along their longitudinal axis without parting from one another. A research team co-led by environmental cell biologist Silvia Bulgheresi from the University ...
Evolution
Aug 22, 2022
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220
It would be a terrible thing if laboratories striving to grow graphene from carbon atoms kept winding up with big pesky diamonds.
Nanomaterials
Jan 31, 2013
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(Phys.org) —A trio of researches with Université Paris Diderot has found that viscoelastic fluids spontaneously form wings which in turn cause the formation of geometric shapes when the fluid is shot out of a jet at high ...
Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have recently shown that the legs of grasshoppers and crabs have the ideal shape to resist bending and compression. If human leg bones were built the same way, they could be twice as ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 12, 2012
11
0
Engineers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VirginiaTech) have developed a robot that mimics the graceful motions of jellyfish so precisely that it has been named Robojelly. Developed for the Office ...
Robotics
Nov 22, 2011
6
0
Bridges are a main component of the transportation infrastructure as we know it today. There are no less than 575,000 highway bridges nationwide, and more than $5 billion are allocated yearly from the federal budget for bridge ...
Engineering
Aug 28, 2013
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