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FEATHER STRENGTHENING. "Iridescent bird feathers may also be stronger than some non-iridescent or white feathers. Iridescent feathers commonly involve the pigment melanin as a structural element, and melanized feathers are sometimes stronger than unmelanized feathers." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/Suppl_2/S115 View in LinkedIn

TWO COMPONENTS. "The elaborate morphologies and abundant functional structures of many biominerals are caused by a biologically mediated combination of organic substances with inorganic material at the nanometer scale." https://lnkd.in/d2qZRG4 View in LinkedIn

NANOFABRICATION. "Nature has evolved complex bottom-up methods for fabricating ordered nanostructured materials that often have extraordinary mechanical strength and toughness ... nacre, the pearly internal layer of many mollusc shells. It has evolved through millions of years to a level of optimization currently achieved in very few engineered composites." https://lnkd.in/dk9bKyT View in LinkedIn

"NACRE is composed of two relatively weak materials: 95 percent calcium carbonate, a brittle ceramic, and 5 percent flexible biopolymer. Even though the calcium carbonate is very weak and brittle on its own, one can get enormous increases in toughness through design at multiple-length scales." https://lnkd.in/dMsDYCF View in LinkedIn

TOUGHNESS. "The complexity we have observed in nacre at the nanoscale is quite amazing and seems likely to be a critical determinant of the toughness of the material." https://lnkd.in/dMsDYCF View in LinkedIn

SHELLS ARE TOUGH. "Nacre is composed of hexagonal platelets of aragonite ... arranged in a continuous parallel lamina. These layers are separated by sheets of organic matrix composed of elastic biopolymers (such as chitin, lustrin and silk-like proteins). This mixture of brittle platelets and the thin layers of elastic biopolymers makes the material strong and resilient." https://lnkd.in/da6Ufu6 View in LinkedIn

MOTHER OF PEARL, or "Nacre consists of 97 percent lime, but has a thousand times higher breaking strength." https://lnkd.in/dyrsJF9 View in LinkedIn

"THE MODULAR DESIGN of the molluskan mantle, along with distinct patterning mechanisms within each zone, allows for immense variation in shell structure and pattern in shell-building mollusks ... is likely to have provided the foundation from which the incredible diversity of molluskan shell shapes and patterns has evolved." https://lnkd.in/daJFnVB View in LinkedIn

MATHEMATICS OF SEASHELL IRIDESCENCE. Here it is in a single elegant descriptive formula based on beautiful multilayered structures shared by some shells and some beetles. http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~kin/publications/PG00/iridescent_colors.pdf View in LinkedIn

MANTLE ZONES. "The spatial expression profiles of mantle genes that belong to the secretome is restricted to discrete mantle zones, with each zone responsible for the fabrication of one of the structural layers of the shell. Patterned expression of a subset of genes along the length of the mantle is indicative of roles in shell ornamentation." https://lnkd.in/daJFnVB View in LinkedIn