BioInspired! So What? Now What!

Translated from Spanish via Google.  Thanks to Dr. Manuel Quirós for the pointer.

Welcome to the RI 3 BIOMIMESIS website, a space where you will find relevant content from an emerging group of experts in one of the most disruptive disciplines of the 21st century, Biomimicry.

ESF [College of Environmental Science and Forestry] will establish a biomimicry laboratory in the heart of the Adirondacks so faculty, visiting scientists and students can devise nature-inspired solutions for sustainability challenges.

The Biomimicry Laboratory at the college's Newcomb Campus will be an Adirondack home for ESF's Roosevelt Wild Life Station and the first biomimicry lab in a wilderness.

Ille Gebeshuber got interested in how we can address global challenges through the Alpbach Conference.  As shown by the work of the Millennium project, the top fifteen challenges are highly interconnected.  We need to combine our specialized/linear ways of thinking with the generalist/holistic Aristotelian approach that integrates knowledge across fields and cultures.  Ille has being running courses in the Indonesia rain forest helping students representing a broad range of disciplines to gain a deeper understanding of how things are connected in nature.  Her talk includes several examples of structural color, the slime mold life cycle, beetle-inspired robots and bio-mineralization of glass in water.

Author: F. E. Fish

Abstract
In recent years, the biomimetic approach has been utilized as a mechanism for technological advancement in the field of robotics. However, there has not been a full appreciation of the success and limitations of biomimetics.

A new service of Nature Publishing, "Scitable brings together a library of scientific overviews with a worldwide community of scientists, researchers, teachers, and students."  In addition to promoting learning, it supports online collaboration, publishing of activities and portfolios, and maintenance of evidence-based online course packs.

The first topic included in Scitable is Genetics, broken down into:

I recently received the following e-mail from OpenWetWare, the collaboration site used by the Institute for Biological Engineering.  The Lab Notebook is based on MediaWiki, the platform for Wikipedia.  Although there is a learning curve, it is relatively easy to use.  Best of all, you do not need to host the Wiki yourself and the costs are very reasonable (free).