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Sea Sponges Master Nano-technology
Mick Ohrberg writes "It has been discovered that sea sponges utilizes a biomolecular mechanism to direct nanofabrication of silica to create microscopic glass fibers. It's a protein that acts as a catalyst for the formation of glass from the biomineral. What's it all lead to? Hopefully a way to achieve nanostructural fabrication at low temperatures, instead of in vacuum and at high temperatures as with current technologies."
It's truly amazing what solutions there are in nature. It's a shame that we can't live less destructive and more ecologically balanced societies.
Photos.
For a beautiful image of glassy needles of silica made by a marine sponge, visit this page about Daniel E. Morse biomolecular research. This is the second one from the top of the page. But don't miss this other page about his current research projects.
Most people don't realize the coolness of biominerals. Although engineers can make materials with better specific properties, we are still hard pressed to be able to match their combined properties. (eg: building materials with the strength/weight ratio of wood)
Nature tends to work with really lousy starting materials which ultimately limits the total performance of those materials. Nontheless, the performance that evolved biomaterials manage to eek out of those materials is quite impressive. For example - the calcium carbonate (chalk) mother of pearl of abalone shell has a total material toughness that is in the same range as nanostructured boron carbide. If we could nano/microstructure our materials after biominerals, a 10-20 fold increase in the materials properties of those materials would not be impossible to believe.
Another good example is tooth enamel. Most people think that tooth enamel is some sort of featureless white material. If you actually look at enamel under magnification, after a quick acid etch to bring out the features, it looks like burlap. It's actually a 3-D woven calcium hydroxyapatite fiber matrix composed of millions of interwoven ceramic fibers that are woven in all three dimensions in a specific fashion that prevents crack propagation. Each fiber is also composed of hundreds of tiny ceramic nanofibers - each being about 40x60 nm single crystals. There are some researchers that believe these nanocrystallites can be over 1mm in length despite their thinness.
The arrangement of the weaving of the larger fibers is uniquely tailored per tooth to maximize the overall strength of the tooth. For example, your incisors and molars and even different portions of those teeth have different weaving paterns that serve to maximize the strength of the tooth with respect to the type of chewing action that it normally sees.
Environmental damage is impossible to quantify. There is no challenge to be met other than to try our best to live in a sustainable world. Current trends point to a severe overburdening of resources. If we do wish to rise to the challenge we're going to have to do it soon.
Don't impose your limitations on me. Anyone trying to make an argument who starts that argument claiming that a physical phenomenon cannot be quantified should be banned from any further participation in the discussion. How can you even think about "liv[ing] in a sustainable world" or "a severe overburdening of resources" without first quantifying whatever environmental damage, if any, we are causing? Before one can speak intelligently on these subjects, he must first determine usage rates and the natural replenishment rates of our resources.
If you looked into this a little bit, you'd be surprised. The united states, for example, supposedly recaptures more CO2 than it produces. How is it easy for a bunch of big bad evil fat fedgov americans to do this? Easy: we cut down an insane number of trees, turn them into paper that goes into our vast corporate wastelands, and plant replacement trees. Environmentalism, real environmentalism, isn't about making a pretty countryside, it's about managing our resources and it is fundamentally a quantitative pursuit.
As for these doomsday predictions, they are often based on faulty methods (i.e. not counting newly planted forest but counting the forest area that was cut down before it; wild, untestable estimates of extinction rates that also ignore the creation of new species; the assumption that there will be no future improvements in the productive capacity of a unit of land or labor.). These predictions have been around for more than 200 years (See Malthus, T.R.) and, more than anything else, are created by researchers who ignore facts to push their agenda.
I'm an environmentalist. I'm staunchly opposed to unstainable development. Unlike most environmentalists, though, I don't assume that anything that a corporation does, or anything that is profitable for anyone, is detrimental to the environment. The human effect on the environment is incredibly small, though. Even in areas such as the Amazon rain forest where acre after acre of forest are burned, it's unlikely that a substantial number of "meaningful" species are extinguished. The species that are hurt the most by these activities are the big, furry, marketable ones. The most important species -- the insects that live in the forest and the myriad plants that live on and around the trees -- can and do coexist in the resulting semiagricultural land. Would it be better if the forest weren't burned down? yes. Are we really threatened in any way because we lose 1 obscure, undiscovered new-world monkey species per year? no. Are trees good? yes. will the forest retake the burned area after it loses its usefuless for cattle farming? probably. Should we do something to slow the destruction of the rainforest? yes. Is there a viable alternative for every wouldbe farmer/rancher in the area that would bring equal or better ROI? not that I know of.
Unfortunately the marketing done by the WWF has backfired, and they've been taken over by fake environmentalists, more worried about the real-life versions of their snow leopard beanie babies than studying or protecting the environment. They also have suffered from the mistaken idea that "the environment" is a static thing. Birds of prey are moving into cities and using parks as hunting grounds and skyscrapers as nesting sites. A species of cockroach in NYC has adapted to feed off of the insulation on wires in electronics. Bears, racoons, and skunks regularly venture deep into cities to forage through trashcans. The environment is always changing, but it is this constant change that creates the variation in species that environmentalists should seek to protect and promote.
Are there polutants that should be kept out of th
(You do get rescued later, though.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana