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Inspired by nature: the science that could transform medicine
- kawera 10y agoI went to TED 2005 in Monterey where most talks were related to that year's theme, "Inspired by Nature". For those interested, I do recommend a wonderful talk by prof. Robert Full, "The sticky wonder of gecko feet": http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_on_animal_movement#t-244505 http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_on_animal_movement#t-24...
- dharma1 10y agoLove this. Evolution has had a very long time to arrive at a huge corpus of various nanoengineering solutions, we should use as much of it as we can.
- agumonkey 10y agoAnd the future was under our nose all along. Finally.
- HillaryBriss 10y agolove the article. hydrophobic glue and so on. interesting stuff. i upvoted it. but i'm not convinced that inspiration from nature to medicine is a new thing. haven't researchers been looking at the techniques plants and fungi use to combat bacteria for a long time, for example? or didn't Pasteur get inspired by nature to create vaccines with the cowpox vs smallpox phenomenon? or weren't more recent attempts to derive an anti-coagulant from the substances used by blood sucking leeches also inspired by nature?
- dekhn 10y agoVelcro was inspired by burrs stuck in a dog coat. Took the inventor ages to commercialize.
- M_Grey 10y agoRight, we've never looked at nature before, Penicillin just happened. /s The difference isn't that people are looking for natural inspiration, although that makes for a great headline. Really, the changes are in the ability to engineer materials, tissues, and the like to fit those paradigms. People had great ideas in the 'naturalistic' vein for a long time, but lacked the means to make it work.