Do you remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and Toto are kidnapped by an army of winged capuchin monkeys? Scary stuff, but why? Because (a) there were lots of them, (b) they were organized, and (c) they had an advantage over other armies: They could fly. More importantly, they could fly and use their hands.

It’s this last point that makes the flying monkeys so distinctly fantastic. In the evolution of vertebrates, we simply do not see this phenomenon…ever. If you want to really fly by flapping a limb to get lift and thrust, you have to give up your hands. Bat or bird, no matter how fast or furious, they still can’t type a text message. Would you give up your hands in order to fly? “Well, I am a bit attached…” you might say, and I would agree: Stick with the hands and leave off the dreams of soaring. But we do dream, don’t we?

At the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center in Madison, Wis., researchers are looking to leafcutter ants for new enzymatic processes that will further progress to commercialize cellulosic ethanol. Leafcutter ants, which are found in tropical climates and live in enormous colonies that can number in the millions, have evolved several features over time that make their particular cocktail of enzymes attractive to researchers.

When I mention the words “high-rise office building” what do you think of? Probably an enclosed glass and steel box, stripped of detail, perfect in its photogenic, modernist simplicity.

Perhaps, like me, you also imagine its occupants: hunched at their desks, panting for fresh air and light, mesmerized by the hum of overhead fluorescent fixtures gone buggy. In fact, our cultural understanding of “high-rise” seems to include its occupants being divorced from their natural surroundings, sequestered in a technologically advanced, artificial environment.

A lot of us have been wondering just how advanced our current model really is.

Mick Pearce is an African architect who has tried to change that model, demonstrating his ideas in two signature buildings, the Eastgate Building in Harare, Zimbabwe, and the Council House 2 Building in Melbourne, Australia. Both buildings employ common-sense passive systems for climate control based on gradients, and both were inspired by the work of a tiny insect, the termite.

As nature’s own solar cells, plants convert sunlight into energy via photosynthesis. New details are emerging about how the process is able to exploit the strange behavior of quantum systems, which could lead to entirely novel approaches to capturing usable light from the sun.

Biomimicry is an approach that looks to nature for effective ways to look at the whole system.  This overview of Biomimicry will provide some examples of how nature can be used by humans to fulfill our needs in a sustainable way.  An overview of the Biomimicry Guild’s Functional Taxonomy, an organized collection of functions that covers everything that life does and that we might want a design will be presented along with opportunities to use biomimicry in a regulatory agency.

Hear about emerging topics in Biomimicry, how this science is being used by a wide range of sectors as they seek out ways to become more sustainable.

Many businesses and organizations have used biomimicry tools to discover how to effectively translate the wisdom of our teacher – the organisms and ecosystems of the natural world – into designs and systems that become sustainable innovations and evolve into a bio-inspired ethos.  Current topics include:

• Nature-based building development
• Site Design
• Manufacturing
• Education
• Policy development

Presented by Marie B. Zanowick, Environmental Engineer, EPA Region 8 Pollution Prevention and Toxics Unit and current student in the Biomimicry 2 Year Certificate Program through the Biomimicry Institute and the Biomimicry Guild.

Engineers are in the business of solving problems. It’s their job to find ways to achieve certain outcomes. The problem might involve finding a way to build a skyscraper that can withstand hurricane-force winds. Or it might be to discover a method to deliver a specific dosage of drugs to a single cell in the human body.

Engineers often look to nature to see if there’s already a solution to the problem they currently face. Not only must they recognize the solution, but also be able to study, copy and enhance that solution so that we can take advantage of it. There’s a special word for this approach: biomimetics. Ultimately, the engineer’s creation mimics the structure or function of a biological entity.

The results can be awe-inspiring or something people routinely take for granted. But even the basic inventions wouldn’t have been possible if engineers hadn’t paid close attention to the way things work in nature. We’ll take a look at five ways nature has inspired the technology we rely upon, listed in no particular order.

Suppose you needed to determine what the top 10 biological designs are. What would they be? I know that one of my candidates would most certainly be the bird’s egg.

There are lots of different kinds of laid eggs in our world and I find them all fascinating no matter which class of animal, insect, fish, bird, reptile, amphibian or mammal (yes, the platypus and echidna are mammals and lay eggs) produced them. I would choose the bird’s egg, however, as a personal favorite. And for its representative, who could resist that largest of all bird eggs, the ostrich egg?

Several years ago biochemists studying marine ecosystems noticed something unusual: a sponge thriving in the middle of a coral reef that was dying from a bacterial infection. The researchers identified a substance made by the sponge that defended it from harmful microbes and realized it was a natural antibacterial molecule called ageliferin. Ageliferin can break down the formation of a protective biofilm coating that bacteria use to shield themselves from threats, including antibiotic drugs.

Want to cool a building? Steal a trick from the forest canopy and use leaves for shade, as Osaka University did with its Frontier Research Center. Builders, architects, and designers seeking better ways to go green are increasingly turning to nature — the original green — for solutions that have proven track records in the real world.

A chemical found in mushrooms could one day replace the expensive and polluting heavy metals at the heart of fuel cells and conventional batteries, say chemists at Oxford University, boosting the development of clean power.

• Building a Sustainable Design Community
• Biomimicry: Nature-Inspired Designs
• Steven Holl’s Global Architecture Footprint
• America’s Greenest City
• Green Business: FedEx’s Hybrid-Truck Program Stalls

A little known fungus tucked away in the gut of Asian longhorned beetles helps the insect munch through the hardest of woods according to a team of entomologists and biochemists. Researchers say the discovery could lead to innovative methods of controlling the invasive pest, and potentially offer more efficient ways of breaking down plant biomass for generating next-generation biofuels. The findings will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are continuing their march toward creating a synthetic, gecko-like adhesive, one sticky step at a time. Their latest milestone is the first adhesive that cleans itself after each use without the need for water or chemicals, much like the remarkable hairs found on the gecko lizard’s toes.

A team of researchers in Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has produced new antimicrobial coatings with potential to prevent diseases from spreading on contaminated surfaces — possibly solving a growing problem not only in hospitals but also in schools, offices, airplanes and elsewhere.

Led by Virginia Davis, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Aleksandr Simonian, professor of materials engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Auburn researchers mixed solutions of lysozyme, a natural product with antimicrobial properties found in egg whites and human tears, with single-walled carbon nanotubes, or SWNTs, which are strong, microscopic pieces of carbon. SWNTs, at one nanometer in diameter, are a perfect cylinder of carbon and keep the lysozyme intact in the coating.

A scientist whose discoveries promised great increases in efficiency for a number of technologies found that companies showed little interest in redesigning their products.

A strain of marine bacteria produces large amounts of bright red pigments that can be used as a natural dye for wool, nylon, silk and other fabrics, scientists in California are reporting. The dyes from Mother Nature’s palate also have an anti-bacterial effect that could discourage harmful bacteria from growing on socks, undergarments, and other clothing, they report in a new study.

Termites — notorious for their voracious appetite for wood, rendering houses to dust and causing billions of dollars in damage per year — may provide the biochemical means to a greener bio-fuel future.

According to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the California Institute of Technology and the Verenium Corporation, the bellies of these tiny beasts actually harbour a gold mine of microbes that have now been tapped as a rich source of enzymes for improving the conversion of wood or waste biomass to valuable bio-fuels.

Marine scientists have long suspected that humpback whales’ incredible agility comes from the bumps on the leading edges of their flippers. Now Harvard University researchers have come up with a mathematical model that helps explain this hydrodynamic edge. The work gives theoretical weight to a growing body of empirical evidence that similar bumps could lead to more-stable airplane designs, submarines with greater agility, and turbine blades that can capture more energy from the wind and water.

Scientists at Case Western University have made a biopolymer that switches rapidly between rigid and flexible states, using material inspired by sea cucumbers. The new material softens in the presence of a water-based solvent, and it stiffens back up as the solvent evaporates. Christoph Weder, lead researcher and professor of macromolecular science and engineering, says that such a material may be useful in the design of implantable electrodes able to record brain activity over long stretches of time, with minimal scarring compared with conventional electrodes.