November 13, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Bats are interesting animals, in that they are the only mammals truly capable of sustained flight. Due to its poor eyesight bats have become such agile fliers that they have been able to adapt flying at night. Bats use echolocation to help them pinpoint their surroundings and allow for them to catch their prey. But what many […]
November 13, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Geckos exhibit an unusual phenomenon that inspires exciting possibilities in human engineering. While frogs, lizards, and most other organisms that have self-orienting responses while falling use aerodynamics, geckos use principle of conservation of angular momentum. Professor Robert Full’s lab at UC Berkeley has studied this behavior extensively. In the video from their study, notice how […]
November 13, 2011 at 11:30 am
In 2001, marine biologist Silvia Macia along with her husband Michael Robinson saw an unusual incident. They had just witnessed a squid “flying” above the water (yes, above!). After discovering this magnificent discovery, they started research on squids; they asked whether any researchers have seen such a thing, a flying squid. This eventually leads to […]
November 12, 2011 at 11:23 pm
The German company, Festo specializes in Pneumatic and Electrical automation technology. This means that their research is directed toward the mastery and optimization of efficient airflow. At this company they have ongoing research in the automation field with their Bionic Learning Network. Here they take engineers and scientists from their company along with people from […]
November 12, 2011 at 7:59 pm
In a previous post from the last quarter, Grace Ingalls talked about the physics of how hummingbirds fly. The hummingbird was described to fly more like an insect rather than a bird since it was able to hover in every direction as opposed to conventional birds who flew only in a forward direction. Impressed by […]