Minnesotas Seattle10 Organizing Committee
A decade has passed since the 1999 World Trade Organization Seattle Protests – let’s make it an anniversary to remember in Minnesota! 10 Years – There’ve been some hard fought wins but the struggle continues as the impacts of globalization continue to be felt around the world – from people to food to climate and the planet. Join us in helping to plan and ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Aug 24, 2009
Updated: Nov 27, 2009
Membership: Open
Semi-Private
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Mission
The mission of The Biomimicry Institute is to nurture and grow a global community of people who are learning from, emulating, and conserving life's genius to create a healthier, more sustainable planet.
What is Biomimicry?
Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis,
meaning to imitate) is a new science that studies nature’s best ideas
and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.
Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example of this
“innovation inspired by nature.”
The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.
Like the viceroy butterfly imitating the monarch, we humans are imitating the best and brightest organisms in our habitat. We are learning, for instance, how to grow food like a prairie, build ceramics like an abalone, create color like a peacock, self-medicate like a chimp, compute like a cell, and run a business like a hickory forest.
The conscious emulation of life’s genius is a survival strategy for the human race, a path to a sustainable future. The more our world looks and functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.
Read an interview with the Institute's president, Janine Benyus where she discusses the field of Biomimicry.
The Biomimicry Institute Launches AskNature!
AskNature.org is a free, on-line, searchable database of Nature's genius organized by design challenge. Learn more here or go straight to AskNature.org. You can also join AskNature group on WiserEarth.
Comments (1 - 2 of 2)
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Since its founding in 2005, the Biomimicry Institute has launched multiple projects including educational programs in schools and universities, trainings for biologists, establishing an Innovation for Conservation program and a first of its kind web-based biomimicry database is in development. Colleagues in Europe have also formed a sister European Institute in Brussels called Biomimicry Europa. If you would like to learn more or help us develop the Institute, please let us know http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/biofeedback.htm.
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We have just attended the world's largest conference about Photovoltaic technology in Valencia (Spain) this week. There were some companies positioning themselves as biomimics because they were developing solar cells inspired by nature. However, it seems that we're still far with conventional techs (i.e. silica based cells) from reaching the effectiveness of green plants harvesting solar power into biological/energy components. Nanostructures capturing infrared solar energy seem to be the most promissing venue, with r&d teams working hard in the US and Europe mainly. Since investments are pretty high to speed up things (i.e 3-4 mUSD per research project), how can we make the return for an eventual breakthrough technology available to everyone in the planet? Unfortunatelly we couldn't attend the Congress Educational Sessions to pulse the state of the art about that, does anyone have some input from which we can learn more?
In principle the cost of the new technology should be much cheaper than the current stuff, but to make it trully global can the market forces in an uneven world be the only ones to make it possible?
EIG on wiser earth
http://www.wiserearth.org/organization/view/717dc4a15496b5833b97053fed0221e5