Good evening, Samuel,
If you consider permaculture as the super-organismic
biomimetics/bionics you will see that this field of ecological
engineering employs to full extent all the already existing biological
systems and processes available and their combinations to create the
desirable novel artificial eco-system with the required parameters. In
other words in permaculture actual biological systems of various
levels are used for as "LEGO" pieces. Ideally there are no wastes in
such kind of artificial systems. See for example books of B.Mollison,
D.Holmgren or my book "Ecological engineering of survival"(2000).
Regards,
Nikolay Bogatyrev
Quoting Samuel Bautista Lazo <[log in to unmask]>:
> Hi all!
>
> In the design for sustainable products I was wondering why most of the
> Biomimetic efforts are aimed at mimicking nature to improve the
> functionality of products but at the end the improved products are still
> made out of synthetic materials (the geko tape, or the Spedo fastskin
> swimming suit, lotusan paint)
>
> What are the challenges for using biological processes and metabolisms to
> sustainabilly produce the materials we need to obtain the functionality for
> everyday products?
>
> Using those materials can we design biological manufacturing proceses to
> make the products we need for a sustainable future?
>
> If we can may be that would reduce the burden on the environment and the
> consumption of non renewable resources or even more may be that could
> contribute to restorative production/consumption systems.
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> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Manfred Drack
> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> In my PhD thesis I came to the conclusion that energy efficiency is not the
>> main issue when it comes to material use in organisms (cf. Ref. below). Why
>> certain materials are used seems to be a result of certain constraints.
>> Perhaps there were more materials "at hand" at the beginning of evolution,
>> but some turned out to be better adapted than others. Once certain materials
>> were utilized there was no way back. There may be similarities to form and
>> structure constraints. An example is our spine, a
>> torpedo-bridge-tower-construction, i.e. in fish it serves a shape adopted to
>> swimming, in quadrupeds the construction was bridge like, and in humans
>> (bipeds) tower like.
>>
>> Title: Bionics and Ecodesign: how are materials used in nature, and what
>> can thus be applied to sustainable product design?
>> Author(s): Drack, M
>> Conference Information: 1st International Conference on Design and Nature,
>> Date: 2002 UDINE ITALY
>> Source: DESIGN AND NATURE: COMPARING DESIGN IN NATURE WITH SCIENCE AND
>> ENGINEERING Volume: 3 Pages: 369-378 Published: 2002
>>
>> Yours,
>> Manfred
>>
>>
>>
>> Timothy McGee schrieb:
>>
>>> **Julian,
>>>
>>> I have also wondered the same thing, and even taking it a step more
>>> detailed- why these particular Amino Acids?
>>>
>>> Nikolay's and Steven's comments reminded me of a quote:
>>> *
>>> "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to
>>> everything else in the Universe." - John Muir
>>>
>>> *A study by Greg Engle (
>>> http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-secrets.html),
>>> gave me an idea. The key challenge to any organization of matter is
>>> energy...in whatever framework you wish to use, entropy, thermodynamics,
>>> etc... but it appears that the quantum interactions of these particular 21
>>> Amino Acids allow the capture and transfer of light to chemically stored
>>> energy...this in itself might explain the 'history' of these particular
>>> amino acids for the polymers of life- or at least could be part of the
>>> story.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Tim
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Samuel Bautista Lazo
>
> UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL
> PhD Research Student
> Design for Sustainability: Industrial Methods
> Cellphone: +44 753 856 0787
> [log in to unmask]
>
> skype: samuel.bautista.lazo
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