In a month about wood, there is certainly one topic which must not be neglected: trees. I would like to close our theme session with this article, which will hopefully answer your most frequently asked questions about trees. What is a tree? Even though almost everyone knows what a tree looks like and probably...
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For the theme session of WOOD, I will take a closer look at the microstructure of trees and write about the structure, function and optimization of vessels and tracheids. It is well known that trees suck up the water by their roots und transfer it up to the leaves. When trees are freshly cut, it is interesting to...
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Today I have the honour to introduce our new theme session and write the editorial for the next four weeks, which are going to be all about: WOOD. I am very excited about this theme session. All our previous theme sessions (LIGHT, ICE, SURFACES) had a physical background. Even if not all of our articles...
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While perhaps far from mainstream science, biological surfaces have received a lot of attention in recent decades, especially by the biomimetic community. In fact, many studies surrounding surfaces have become the prime examples of Bionics/Biomimetics, such as the self-cleaning lotus leaves, the super adhesive gecko pads, etc. In this post, I will be focusing on the...
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Recently, I watched an old family video that we recorded when we were on holidays in the Mediterranean. To my surprise, the only sound I heard was the unpleasant noise of insects that appear in huge numbers in this area. It does not matter how hard I tried every year to see one, they are...
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Insects, bugs, creepy-crawlies. You either love them or hate them, but one thing is for sure – they are everywhere. Throughout their 480 million years of existence, insects have evolved to thrive in almost every niche imaginable, from the extremely hot Saharan desert (e.g., Saharan silver ants), to the wet aquatic environments (e.g., dragonfly nymphs,...
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Greetings readers, in my article today I am going to talk about structural mechanics and where in nature we can find examples for it. Biomimetics being a multi-disciplinary study enables the flexibility http://www.blogionik.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=1348&action=editto choose the topic of interest. During my study of Biomimetics, we had a unique mix of students coming both from biology and engineering....
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It does not matter where on Earth we are, water is essential for all living organisms. Some organisms are luck and do not even have to consider that as a problem but for the others it means a daily fight for survival. Desert is a typical example where water sources are rare, sometimes it does...
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We have written already quite a lot about the concept behind the subject Biomimetics: to analyse a biological system or structure, extract its functional principles, abstract and implement it in technology. Today I would like to introduce the topic Baubotanik which fits in this context, even though it is not actually a biomimetic process by...
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Usually when we talk about colors, we talk about pigments, which are giving objects their appearance. But there are other ways to generate colorful images. In nature we can find multiple examples for structure related colors, most commonly known are the butterflies and peacocks. This week I try to give an answer to the question:...
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