1.1. "The arrester or fixation system of the head in adult Odonata is unique among arthropods. This system involves the organs of two body segments: the head and the neck. It consists of a skeleton-muscle apparatus that sets the arrester parts in motion. The parts comprise formations covered with complicated microstructures--fields of microtrichia on the rear surface of the head and post-cervical sclerites of the neck. The arrester immobilizes the head during feeding or when the dragonfly is in tandem flight. Thus, it may serve as an adaptation to save the head from violent mechanical disturbance and to stabilize gaze in a variety of behavioral situations." "The arrester system includes the adjusting organs of two body segments--the head and neck--and consists of (i) the skeleton-muscle apparatus that moves the head and neck sclerites, (ii) co-opted microsculptures, which are fields of microtrichia on the rear surface of the head (MFH) and on the post-cervical sclerites of the neck (SPCs), (iii) the secretory apparatus consisting of epidermal cells, which produces lipid substances which pass through porous channels in the cuticle into the region of contact between the MFH and SPCs, and (iv) sensory organs monitoring contact between the MFH and SPCs and the position of the SPCs relative to the other neck sclerites
1.2. Solarsails are constructed atop marine vehicles and can harness both wind and solar energy to help power the craft. The solar "wings" use solar panels that can track the sun but can also be physically moved by the wind to capture the most readily available source of energy at any given time.
2. Smart
2.1. Researchers at the University of Bath are developing a new type of bandage that could selectively kill harmful bacteria in wounds, while allowing helpful bacteria to continue flourishing and assisting in the healing and disinfecting of the damaged area. The “smart bandage” contains tiny saclike structures that mimic cells and induce harmful bacteria to attack, then burst open to release anti-bacterial agents that kill the organism. In the short term, this new biotechnology will help wounds fight off infection and heal faster, while in the long term slowing the resistance to antibiotics that bacterial strains so quickly develop.
2.2. "A major adaptation that allows penguins to forage in cold water is the humeral arterial plexus, a vascular counter-current heat exchanger (CCHE) through the flipper...Foraging exposes penguins to water well below core body temperature and presents a constant threat of hypothermia, a risk avoided in part by managing the flow of heat along the wing. [In most birds] Blood is supplied to the wings of birds through a single major vessel that traverses the humerus as the brachial artery...By contrast, the brachial artery of penguins splits into three to five major vessels that traverse the humerus before anastomosing to two arteries at the humerus–radius joint. Each humeral artery is associated with two or more veins to form a countercurrent heat exchanger (CCHE), the humeral arterial plexus. Blood is supplied to the wing at core body temperature (38.5 deg C), and outgoing arterial blood heats the cooler incoming venous blood at the plexus; heat is thus conserved and returned to the body core instead of travelling further out along the wing to become lost to cold water. The efficacy of the humeral plexus as a CCHE mechanism has been demonstrated by up to 30 deg C internal temperature differences measured between the shoulders and wingtips of penguins."
2.3. Large groups of mosquitofish can move together with little physical contact between individuals. This is because the individual fish coordinate their acceleration and deceleration. The fish accelerate toward a neighbor that is far away from or behind them, and decelerate when a neighbor is directly in front of them.
3. Evolved to Survival
3.1. The damage-sensing, self-healing material developed at Arizona State University consists of shape-memory polymers embedded with a fiber-optic network. This network is able to detect damage to the material, then apply thermal stimulus by way of an infrared laser to the damaged area to heat the specific damaged region. This heat in turn stimulates toughening and healing mechanisms that have been integrated into the material. Once the material is damaged, the self-healing process can recover up to 96% of the material’s original strength.
3.2. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT in Oberhausen, Germany have come up with self-healing elastomers that can repair themselves autonomously, in order to put a stop to the growth of cracks from the start while avoiding spontaneous material failure.
3.3. Japanese micro-engineers created a minute needle just one millimeter long and with a diameter of 0.1 millimeters. They etched slices of silicon dioxide into a jagged shape and bonded them together. There are two serrated shanks that form the outer surface of the needle. A central shaft then slides between them to inject or withdraw the sample. The needle is connected to a small reservoir that is equipped with an optical sensor to analyze samples.
4. Adapt
4.1. "Tandem runs are a form of recruitment in ants. During a tandem run, a single leader teaches one follower the route to important resources such as sources of food or better nest sites. In the present study, we investigate what tandem leaders and followers do, in the context of nest emigration, if their partner goes missing. Our experiments involved removing either leaders or followers at set points during tandem runs. Former leaders first stand still and wait for their missing follower but then most often proceed alone to the new nest site. By contrast, former followers often first engage in a Brownian search, for almost exactly the time that their former leader should have waited for them, and then former followers switch to a superdiffusive search. In this way, former followers first search their immediate neighbourhood for their lost leader before becoming ever more wide ranging so that in the absence of their former leader they can often find the new nest, re-encounter the old one or meet a new leader. We also show that followers gain useful information even from incomplete tandem runs. These observations point to the important principle that sophisticated communication behaviours may have evolved as anytime algorithms, i.e. procedures that are beneficial even if they do not run to completion."
4.2. "Change in body length is considered to be unidirectional in vertebrates1, but we have repeatedly observed shrinkage in the snout-to-vent length of individual adult iguanid lizards. In two studies, one lasting 18 years and one 8 years, of two island populations of Galápagos marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), we found that individuals became shorter by as much as 20% (6.8 cm) within two years. This shrinking coincided with low availability of food, resulting from El Niño events. Body length increased again during subsequent La Niña conditions, when algal food was abundant. We found that lizards that shrank more survived longer than larger iguanas during harsh periods because their foraging efficiency increased and their energy expenditure decreased. Shrinking in marine iguanas may be an adaptive response to low food availability and energetic stress. Measurements of a cohort of adults more than 300 mm long during the strong 1992–93 El Niño event show that individuals that shrank more survived significantly longer (Fig. 2b). The mechanisms that determine whether and to what extent an individual shrinks during El Niño events remain unclear. Reduction in body length has been observed previously, and growth rates set to zero by definition, but to our knowledge this is the first report of shrinkage in adult vertebrates" [Note: The decrease in body size is the main strategy, no matter how it occurs. However, the paper mentions reabsorption of bone as the possible mechanism.]
