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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE focuses on the evolution of plant body plans for this and next weekend. Plants can sometimes seem like extraterrestrial creatures. Wrapping ones mind around them is not easy, and biologists have long demonstrated a lack of understanding of these curious beings, which are so much less like vertebrates. How can an advanced creature be both diffuse (plant intelligence) and modular (cut off a bit of a plant and propagate it)? View in LinkedIn

Darwin’s mental rioting in Notebook B. View in LinkedIn

“PROGRAMMABLE PROPERTIES of innate or living things include SGH, ferroelectricity, pyroelectricity, piezoelectricity, and optical activity, and coupling of different streams of energy. And as we have explored before in earlier blogs, also phase changes in intracellular structured water.” https://lnkd.in/d2H77Zq View in LinkedIn

ENERGY COUPLING IS KEY. "Functionality of biological and inorganic systems ranging from non-volatile computer memories and microelectromechanical systems to electromotor proteins and cellular membranes is ultimately based on the intricate coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena." https://lnkd.in/ehnBzph View in LinkedIn

MIT SELF-ASSEMBLY LAB. “Natural phenomena such as growth, evolution and self-organisation are no longer only studied in design as mere metaphors or digital simulations. Rather, they can now be utilised in physical materials and fabricated systems.” https://lnkd.in/dKGCmuj View in LinkedIn

MECHANICAL CONSTRAINTS. "If it is true that developmental constraints play an important role in plant evolution, then it is equally true that biomechanical relationships have influenced the evolution of body plans at the cell, tissue, organ, and organismic levels of organization." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/85/4/411.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

PIEZOACTIVITY, polarization and optical birefringence, such as in butterfly wings, are explored in chemicals for nanomotors and molecular machines. Biomimicry at its best. An inspiring review. https://lnkd.in/eBe5QYb View in LinkedIn

Guess. View in LinkedIn

NERVE AND MUSCLE ION CHANNELS are "excitable membranes and ion channels exhibit properties characteristic of ferroelectrics, including critical temperatures, hysteresis, pyroelectricity and surface charges...Leuchtag proposed a functional role for ferroelectric phase transitions in ion channels." https://lnkd.in/eBe5QYb View in LinkedIn

“PROGRAMMABLE MATTER stores externally inputted energy to be released to do specific work at a specific time. Often, physical changes of phase or properties of materials are exploited to store this energy as coded information. "Information" in this context simply means a signal that can induce a physical change that is capable of doing some kind of work.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter View in LinkedIn