Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

by Janine M. Benyus

Biomimicry is a revolutionary new science that analyzes nature's best ideas -- spider silk and prairie grass, seashells and brain cells -- and adapts them for human use. Science writer and lecturer Janine Benyus takes us into the lab and out in the field with the maverick researchers who are applying nature's ingenious solutions to the problem of human survival: stirring vats of proteins to unleash their signaling... (more)

Biomimicry for Optimization, Control, and Automation

Biomimicry for Optimization, Control, and Automation

by Kevin M. Passino

There are many highly effective optimization, feedback control, and automation systems embedded in living organisms and nature. Evolution persistently seeks optimal robust designs for biological feedback control systems and decision making processes. From this comprehensive text you will gain knowledge of how mimicry of such biological processes can be used to solve optimization, control, and automation problems... (more)

The ultimate flattery: learning from nature through biomimicry.(House & Home): An article from: EStarre Vartan

The ultimate flattery: learning from nature through biomimicry.(House & Home): An article from: E

by Starre Vartan

This digital document is an article from E, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 865 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Citation Details Title: The ultimate flattery: learning from... (more)

The Hidden Powers of Animals (Reader's Digest)

The Hidden Powers of Animals (Reader's Digest)

by Karl P. N. Shuker

A fascinating look at the astonishing behavior and super-human abilities of animals, from kings of the jungle to household pets. Written by an experienced zoologist and based on cutting-edge scientific research, this book reveals incredible truths about animals and their remarkable sensitivities, skills and strengths.

Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing

Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing

by Henry Petroski

A master explicator of the principles and processes that turn thoughts into the many things that define the material world offers an insider's look at the political and cultural dimensions of design, development, and production. 64 line illustrations. 29 halftones.

The Work of Nature: How The Diversity Of Life Sustains Us

The Work of Nature: How The Diversity Of Life Sustains Us

by Yvonne Baskin

"We do not question that flesh and bone and leaf litter will decay to dust, that seeds will sprout season after season and find renewed nourishment in the soil, that rivers can flow endlessly without running dry, that we can breathe a lifetime without depleting the air of oxygen.... What humans have not fully appreciated until recently is that these services are the work of nature, performed by the rich diversity... (more)

Natural Earth, Living EarthMiranda Smith

Natural Earth, Living Earth

by Miranda Smith

Mazes for the Mind: Computers and the UnexpectedClifford A. Pickover

Mazes for the Mind: Computers and the Unexpected

by Clifford A. Pickover

A collection of games and computer graphics is divided into sections dealing with pattern, games and speculation, music, space, time, and others and offers puzzles inspired by those dating back several centuries.

Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell

Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell

by Boyce Rensberger

Hidden in a nondescript red-brick building in Rockville, Maryland, is the most unusual warehouse in the world, a bank of living cells called the American Type Culture Collection. Here, at 321 degrees below zero--a temperature at which life abandons its vital dance and enters limbo, but without dying--are some 30,000 vials holding 60 billion living forms in suspended animation, including mouse kidney cells, turkey... (more)

The Gecko's Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature

The Gecko's Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature

by Peter Forbes

A cutting-edge science book in the style of FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM and CHAOS from an exciting and accessible new voice in popular science writing. Bio-inspiration is the new engineering. Instead of - in its crudest terms - welding large piece of hard 'dry' right-angled metal together scientists, architects and engineers are looking at imitating (or mimicking) nature by manufacturing 'wet' materials such as spider... (more)

Design and Nature II: Comparing Design in Nature With Science and Engineering (Design and Nature, 6)

Design and Nature II: Comparing Design in Nature With Science and Engineering (Design and Nature, 6)

by M. W. Collins, C. A. Brebbia

Throughout history, many leading thinkers in disciplines such as mathematics and engineering have been inspired by the parallels between nature and human design. Today the huge increase in biological knowledge, developments in design engineering systems together with the virtual revolution in computer power and simulation modelling, have all made possible more comprehensive studies of nature. Containing the... (more)

Power of Limits

by Gyorgy Doczi

One of the delights of life is the discovery and rediscovery of patterns of order and beauty in nature—the designs revealed by slicing through a head of cabbage or an orange, the forms of shells and butterfly wings. These images are awesome not just for their beauty alone, but because they suggest an order underlying their growth, a harmony existing in nature. What does it mean that such an order exists; how far... (more)

Nature, mother of invention: The engineering of plant lifeFelix R Paturi

Nature, mother of invention: The engineering of plant life

by Felix R. Paturi

Text: English, German (translation)

Weird Nature: An Astonishing Exploration of Nature's Strangest Behavior

Weird Nature: An Astonishing Exploration of Nature's Strangest Behavior

by John Downer

The companion book to the six-part Discovery Channel series, Weird Nature is an astonishing exploration of nature's strangest behavior. The ingenuity of all kinds of animals is celebrated including the flying dragon or draco whose membrane wings resemble early designs for aircraft wings, spiny lobsters in Florida who form a "mass conga line" when moving to deeper waters and the Wallace tree frog whose large webbed... (more)

The Biomechanics of Insect Flight: Form, Function, Evolution

The Biomechanics of Insect Flight: Form, Function, Evolution

by Robert Dudley

From the rain forests of Borneo to the tenements of Manhattan, winged insects are a conspicuous and abundant feature of life on earth. Here, Robert Dudley presents the first comprehensive explanation of how insects fly. The author relates the biomechanics of flight to insect ecology and evolution in a major new work of synthesis. The book begins with an overview of insect flight biomechanics. Dudley explains... (more)

Color in Nature: A Visual and Scientific Exploration

Color in Nature: A Visual and Scientific Exploration

by Penelope A. Farrant

Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies

Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies

by Yoseph Bar-Cohen

Nature is the world's foremost designer. With billions of years of experience and boasting the most extensive laboratory available, it conducts research in every branch of engineering and science. Nature's designs and capabilities have always inspired technology, from the use of tongs and tweezers to genetic algorithms and autonomous legged robots. Taking a systems perspective rather than focusing narrowly on... (more)

Exploring Biomechanics: Animals in MotionR. McNeill Alexander

Exploring Biomechanics: Animals in Motion

by R. McNeill Alexander

The book examines the entire range of animal movements. Beginning with humans and other complex animals and ending with single-celled organisms, the book describes and illustrates how animals walk, run and jump; crawl and climb; soar and fly; float and swim. Are insects crawling on the underside of leaves defying gravity? Are fleas really nature's premier jumpers? Can a running cheetah reach 70 miles per hour? Do... (more)

Deep Design: Pathways To A Livable Future

Deep Design: Pathways To A Livable Future

by David Wann

In Deep Design, David Wann explores a new way of thinking about design, one that asks "What is our ultimate goal?" before the first step has even been taken. Designs that begin with such a question -whether in products, buildings, technologies, or communities-are sensitive to living systems, and can potentially accomplish their mission without the seemingly unavoidable side effects of pollution, erosion,... (more)

Structural Biomaterials

by Julian F. V. Vincent

"This book should go a long way towards filling the communication gap between biology and physics in <the area of biomaterials>. It begins with the basic theory of elasticity and viscoelasticity, describing concepts like stress, strain, compliance, and plasticity in simple mathematical terms. . . . For the non-biologist, these chapters provide a clear account of macromolecular structure and conformation. . .... (more)

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Tags: biomimicry