Investigate “biomimicry” and report on your findings.
Can you find examples of biomimicry at each of the three levels Janine Benyon describes?
I did some research, and I found interesting examples that we have got from nature, I noticed that biomimicry means getting inspiration from our environment and transfer them to our daily life to solve our problems or even make our world better place to live or make it beautiful. I got different examples from designing a building or even some communication tools that we have used biomimicry on them, but I should say that I found it really hard to find an example about level three that Janine Benyon has described it.here are some examples that I found:
1. Sagrada Familia:
Gaudi’s stunning buildings in Barcelona, Spain, Gaudi took over design in 1883 and the building is due to be finished in 2026, 100 years after his death in June 1926, aged 73. The cathedral ’s interior is inspired by the idea of a forest that invites prayer.
2.Kunsthaus Graz:
Dr. Marcus Cruz, who was involved with planning the Kunsthaus in Austria along with main architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier says" the building took inspiration from natural forms but didn’t mimic them exactly.
Cruz’s own research included looking at microscopic images of sea creatures."
3.National Taichung Theater:
Toyo Ito drew inspiration from the formation of rocks, caves and the transience of water for his design for The National Taichung Theater, which he hoped would provide a soft and mellow respite within the city of Taichung, Taiwan.
Also, I found those examples as well:
1.Firefly Lightbulbs.
2.Candy-Coated Vaccines.
3.A Very Fishy Wind Farm.
4.Spider Web Glass.
5.Watercube.
which we got the idea from them to make new tools but most of those ideas even did not have used level two of biomimicry.they just got the idea by seeing how they are working and have tried to make similar to them.
I found interesting that the idea of the needle is coming from mosquitoes:
A human almost experiences no pain when pricked by a mosquito. The detailed insertion mechanism of the mosquito proboscis was investigated based on the observation of its penetrating motion into a transparent polymer material using a high-speed camera system. Among the parts of the mosquito proboscis, a center labrum and two maxillae beside it were biomimicked, creating the engineering equivalent of three microneedles by using a micromachining process. It was proven that the resistance force during insertion into an artificial skin is markedly reduced by cooperatively moving the three needles in a certain time phase to each other as the mosquito does. It is expected that pain would be reduced using the fabricated microneedles since pain and resistance force have a positive correlation.
“In mosquitoes the proboscis is a marvelously intricate structure…consisting of six different styles, each adapted for a particular purpose–for making the primary incision, inserting anti-coagulant and digestive enzymes contained in the insect’s saliva and, finally, withdrawing the blood itself. All the stylets are secreted within a protective sheath formed by the labium or lower lip, which, during blood extraction, is slid up out of the way into a loop form.” (Wootton 1984:72)
or
“The mouthparts of female mosquitoes have evolved to form a special proboscis, a natural biomicroelectromechanical system (BMEMS), which is used for painlessly penetrating human skin and sucking blood. Scanning electron microscope observations show that the mosquito proboscis consists of a small bundle of long, tapering, and feeding styles that are collectively called the fascicle, and a large scaly outer lower lip called the labium. During blood feeding, only the fascicle penetrates into the skin while the labium buckles back to remain on the surface of the skin…[The mosquito] uses the two maxillas as variable frequency micro saws with nano-sharp teeth to advance into the skin tissue. This elegant BMEMS enables the mosquito to insert its feeding fascicle into human skin using an exceedingly small force (average of 16.5 μN).” (Kong and Wu 2010:1)
Insects of the World
July 1, 2018
Walter Linsenmaier
A needle which mimics the mosquito’s unique “stinger”, making injections painless, has been developed by a team of Japanese microengineering. Contrary to popular belief, a mosquito can stab you with its proboscis without you feeling a thing. It then injects anticoagulant saliva to stop your blood clotting while it feeds, and it is this that carries the bacteria that cause irritation and pain.
Seiji Aoyagi at Kansai University in Osaka and his colleagues concluded that "the initial bite is painless because the mosquito’s proboscis is highly serrated. Unlike the smooth surface of a syringe needle, which leaves a lot of metal in contact with skin tissue, the jagged edge of the proboscis leaves only small points in contact. This greatly reduces stimulation of the nerves, says Aoyagi, causing far less pain."
To mimic this effect, Aoyagi and his engineering team created a needle just one millimeter long and 0.1 millimeters in diameter. They did this by etching slices of silicon dioxide into a jagged shape and then bonding them together. The needle’s walls were just 1.6 micrometers thick.
Then they fitted the needle with a five-millimeter-wide tank, which in future could store blood or fluids collected by the needle. An optical fiber inserted into the tank would allow doctors to analyze samples.
To test the needle’s strength, the researchers pushed the needle into a piece of silicone rubber – which has puncture resistance similar to the skin – wrapped around a vessel containing a red dye. The tank filled with the dye, indicating that the needle is up to the challenge of puncturing the skin.
The inventors hope the microneedle will be the forerunner of small wireless devices for collecting blood that could be permanently attached to the body. Such devices could monitor blood-sugar levels in diabetic people or collect blood samples from patients for diagnosis in a lab.
Aoyagi plans to conduct human trials eventually, but there are still some hurdles to overcome. “It is still a big problem that our needle is brittle,” he says.
“If a piece broke off in a hypodermic injection a blood clot could form.” And if such a clot entered the bloodstream and traveled to the brain or heart it could be lethal. Aoyagi hopes further research will resolve the issue and lead to safer designs.
conclusion:
I believe needle can go to level one and not two or three for now base on our technology but you never know maybe in future we can go to level three by advancing our technology. Right now it is a little bit hard to do it and make it real like mosquitoes are having. Most of my examples are saying that human has intelligence but having intelligence will not enough to save us, we need intelligence to understand and learn from our nature and other animals who also have some intelligence to survive.
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