Cities that Function Like Forests
Earlier this year Janine Benyus spoke at the 2014 Geodesign Summit, an annual gathering of professionals interested in using geospatial technologies to arrive at the best and most sustainable design solutions. The talk she gave was recorded and would be great to share...Biomimicry in the Beer Aisle?
From MinuteEarth, here is a fun video that explains biodiversity by comparing the strategies used by plants growing in the understory of a forest with the strategies micro-breweries to use to succeed in the shadow of large brands. While we probably wouldn’t...The Fox’s Sixth Sense
If you are a fox, and it’s winter, most of your food is hiding somewhere under the snow. So how might you go about catching a meal? Foxes hunt mice, and in winter they can often be seen “mousing,” quietly stalking their prey in open snowfields....3D Printing and Sustainability – Webinar Recording
Last month Janine Benyus participated in a very interesting webinar session about the overlap of 3D printing with clean-tech and sustainability. A video recording of the webinar is now available for those who might have missed it. Hear Janine and others weigh in on...Living Mechanical Gear
The science blogs were all a flutter last week with the announcement that researchers in the UK had identified the only known example of a mechanical gear in nature. The gear in question belongs to the adolescent form of the Issus genus of planthoppers, small...Nature’s Torpedoes
Penguins can’t fly. Optimized for life at sea, their flipper-like wings won’t take them skyward, no matter how hard the birds flap them. Still, that doesn’t stop them from getting some big air. Especially when they need to evade a hungry leopard...Another Reason Spider Webs are Sticky
New research suggests that one reason spider webs are so effective at capturing prey, may be magnetism. Or, more precisely, that they respond to the electrostatic charge generated by flying insects. The authors of a new study found that the silk threads of webs made...The Voice of the Natural World
As visual creatures, sight tends to dominate much of our perception. As a result it’s easy to miss a lot of what’s happening around us in nature. That’s why one of our favorite exercises to do with students of any age, is the creation of a Sound Map...Google Reef View
Last fall Google took their “Street View” feature underwater and added the first panoramic images of coral reefs to Google Maps, in partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. The collection includes reefs at six sites in Australia, Hawaii and the...Share
