Science and Technology Daily Intern Reporter Zhang Jiaxin
Although animals and plants are facing widespread extinction caused by human-driven factors such as climate change, nature is still inspiring human scientific discoveries in unexpected ways.
"Nature has spent hundreds of millions of years optimizing solutions to extremely complex problems." said Aaron Gorodesky, a biomedical engineer at the University of California, Irvine.
Okra Adhesive can stop heart bleeding
Now, a biodegradable plaster made from sticky okra gel can stop bleeding in the hearts and livers of dogs and rabbits without stitches.
Okra is a fuzzy green vegetable whose sticky texture inspired Malcolm Xing of the University of Manitoba in Canada to turn it into a medical adhesive.
html In the study, published in July in Advanced Medical Materials, researchers found that refining okra in a juicer and then drying it into a powder produced an effective bioadhesive and quickly formed a physical barrier to initiate the blood clotting process. The researchers plan to test the plaster on humans in the coming years.
Cow mucus lubricant could prevent AIDS
A lubricant made from cow mucus has the potential to reduce the spread of diseases such as AIDS, laboratory tests have found.
The research, published in September in the journal Advanced Science, is still preliminary and has not yet been tested in humans.
Researchers extracted mucus from the salivary glands of cows and turned it into a gel that binds to and inhibits viruses. Image source: Physicist Organization Network
Researchers extracted mucus from the salivary glands of cattle and converted it into a gel that binds and restrains viruses. The mucus is composed of the mucin , which may have antiviral properties. Mucin molecules have naturally complex biological properties and can effectively prevent AIDS and herpes virus infections without producing side effects or drug resistance.
It comes in two forms: solid and liquid. Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, call the solid, which can capture bacteria or viruses in the body. As a liquid, it removes pathogens from the body.
Robots Fireflies Assist in search and rescue efforts
On warm summer nights, fireflies use their light to attract mates, ward off predators, or lure prey.
Fireflies light up the night sky and inspired scientists at MIT to create insect-sized microrobots that glow as they fly.
Fireflies have inspired scientists to build bug-sized robots that can be used in search and rescue missions. Image source: Physicist Organization Network
According to a paper published in "IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters" in June, based on inspiration from nature, researchers have created soft, glowing artificial muscles for insect-sized flying robots, with tiny electroluminescent particles embedded in them. Controlling tiny artificial muscles on a robot's wings allows it to emit colored lights during flight.
The weight of a "firefly" is only slightly heavier than a paper clip. Researchers have demonstrated that they can accurately track a robot using the light it emits and three smartphone cameras.
Electroluminescence can enable robots to communicate with each other. For example, if sent on a search-and-rescue mission to a collapsed building, a robot firefly looking for survivors could use its light to signal other companions and call for help. Although these robots have so far only been able to operate in laboratory settings, researchers are excited about their potential future uses.
trained Ants can smell cancer
There are an estimated 20 trillion ants in the world, and researchers have discovered that one species of ant may be able to sniff out cancer in the human breast.
Scientists at the Sorbonne-Paris Nord University used sugar water rewards to train serpentine forest ants to smell the difference between the urine of mice implanted with human tumors and those without, according to research published in March in the journal iScience.
mercerized brown wood ant. Image source: New Scientist website
In just three training trials, the researchers were able to effectively teach the ants to distinguish cancer cells from non-cancer cells, with an accuracy similar to studies using dogs.
Researchers said that in some aspects, ants surpass dogs because they require extremely short training time, only 30 minutes, while dogs require 6-12 months, and the training and maintenance costs are lower, and they only need to be fed honey and frozen insects twice a week.
Cancer cells are known to produce volatile organic compounds , molecules that give them their distinctive smell. Therefore, some dogs can use their highly sensitive noses to sniff out cancer, but training them can be expensive and time-consuming. Ants may one day provide a simpler and cheaper method of non-invasive tumor identification than sniffer dogs.
'Squid skin' packaging keeps takeout warm
Ordering takeout or takeout food brings convenience to people, but what should you do if you are worried about the food getting cold?
According to a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability in March, the strange skin of squid inspired the development of a packaging material that can achieve a temperature regulation effect and can be used as outer packaging to keep food warm.
A squid skin-inspired material wraps around coffee cups to protect fingers from the heat. Image source: University of California, Irvine, USA
Squids and other cephalopods have an amazing ability to camouflage themselves to adapt to their environment. Squids have tiny organs called chromatophores that can significantly change size and also help them change color.
To mimic these pigment-vesicle-filled organs, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have created a large-area "squid-skin" composite material that regulates heat through reconfigurable metal structures that can reversibly separate from each other and put back together at different levels of strain. The "metallic islands" in the
composite sit next to each other when the material relaxes and separate when the material stretches, allowing control of the reflection and transmission of infrared light, or heat dissipation.
Editor: Zhang Shuang
Review: Zhu Li
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