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biomimicry

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

February 3, 2012 by Gil Friend
with 467 views
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Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It's a rugged mix of bad news and good.) Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence -- more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big... [read more]

Plastic “Trees” Convert Atmospheric CO2

August 15, 2011 by Silvio Marcacci
with 581 views
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Recycling has always meant reusing materials like glass or plastic, and reducing atmospheric carbon has traditionally meant cutting emissions, but what if we could combine the two to make combating climate change profitable by recycling carbon out of the atmosphere? energyNOW! correspondent Josh Zepps looked into a new technology that could pull a thousand times more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than trees, and could one day power our cars and trucks with green gasoline. [read more]

What business can learn from Sea-Monkeys

October 20, 2010 by Marc Gunther
with 953 views
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If you were one of those kids who looked forward to science class, you probably remember Sea-Monkeys. I wasn’t into science but, as I recall, you could order Sea Monkeys from the back page of a comic book. According to Wikipedia, Sea Monkeys are the brand name for a variant of brine shrimp… a species which enters cyptobiosis,  a... [read more]

Is biomimicry a “megacategory” of cleantech?

May 31, 2010 by Tyler Hamilton
with 601 views
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I had a terrific interview last week with natural sciences expert Janine Benyus, who is the foremost authority on an emerging area of science called biomimicry. In fact, Benyus is credited with coining the term in the1990s. Basically, biomimicry is about innovation that replicates what already works well in nature, whether it... [read more]

A New Spin on Climate Engineering

January 7, 2010 by Big Gav
with 133 views
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TreeHugger has a post on a proposal for mitigating climate change using a form of biomimicry from Pax Scientific's Jay Harman (which I admit makes little sense to me) - A New Spin on Climate Engineering. Jay Harman's idea of using spiral dynamics to create spinning, vortex-shaped impellers that serve as heat sinks and buy us time to... [read more]

Flapping Wind Turbine Inspired by Bumble Bee Wings

November 4, 2009 by Big Gav
with 249 views
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TreeHugger has a post on some biomimicry being applied to wind turbine design - Flapping Wind Turbine Inspired by Bumble Bee Wings. VentureBeat has more.The xBEE has a19-foot wingspan and swoops in a majestic back-and-forth pattern. Green Wavelength CEO Sabri Sansoy (an MIT grad with a master's in Aeronautics and Astronautics) says, "... [read more]

GE, biomimicry, wind and nanopants

October 16, 2009 by Marc Gunther
with 249 views
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Earlier this week, I visited GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, near Albany. Cool place, the home base for about 1,900 scientists, and one of four GE research centers around the world. The others are in Bangalore, Munich and Shanghai. I wrote a column for FORTUNE’s website about GE’s venture investments (GE brings good... [read more]

Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

August 6, 2009 by Big Gav
with 512 views
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TED has a new talk from Janine Benyus, promoting biomimicry based design - Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action.Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of... [read more]