The topic of energy storage is more up-to-date than ever. Electric mobility solutions are in need of high-capacity batteries to operate over large distances. The demand for renewable energy sources like wind or solar energy is growing – but those resources are not continuously available. Practical solutions to store energy, available during storms or sunshine...
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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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The unbelievable fact that frogs can survive the freezing of their own body led me to writing this article in the theme session of ice. Frogs are cold-blooded organisms and their body temperature conforms with their immediate surrounding. This feature would normally prevent habitations of cold climate due to the risk of lethal freezing. Nevertheless,...
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With this article about socio economic Biomimetics I am slightly moving away from our common topics which are mainly technologically oriented and based on scientific research. The purpose is to subjectively present a natural system and imagine how its processes could be transferred into society that it becomes more sustainable, flexible and autonomous. Last week, Katharina...
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Is there a person who does not like forests? Someone who is not fascinated by the atmosphere, the smell, the sounds of a forest? Maybe some people are scared by forests. The darkness, the many places to hide and unknown sounds. But actually: that’s what makes the forest a mystical and tempting place to be,...
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One week ago my colleague Anja spoke about temperature regulation in plants and animals. Temperature regulation in plants and animals. I would like to follow up on that topic and relate how technical implementations of some of those principles could look like. Heating and cooling systems are quite prominent these days. We humans have conquered both...
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In my last articles I set the focus on the field of sensors in Biomimetics. Today I’d like to write about skin and its technological future. The skin is the main instance for a lot of creatures to create a border between them and their environment. However, a skin is not just about the definition of their own...
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During evolution, life has spread all around the world. This means that different species of plants and animals are inhabiting practically every part of the Earth with different climate conditions. For humans it is not such a problem to live even in extreme conditions. Our technology, for example air conditioning in summer and heating systems...
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In my previous article I was explaining the swarming behavior of fish in a predator-prey system. There you can read about basic rules underlying the mechanism of swarm formation. The next step now is to make a computer simulation of such a system by using the Matlab software. Without any previous experience with programming languages, this first step...
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There are always two interesting parts in the field of Biomimetics. The first one belongs to biological phenomena and the other one is the technical part. In all our previous articles we were describing some interesting natural systems or structures and processes, but so far we have not discussed how they can be put in...
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