Karl Priest
[Originally shared on the insect news page: Thank God for Insects]
Editor’s note: Every month new reports come out about the incredible design of the insect and creepie-crawly world. Whether it is scientists being blown away by the complexity of their systems or engineers looking to recreate the same features, no one doubts they are crafted with skill and precision. The only issue we keep running up against is the refusal of the researchers to acknowledge there is a mind and purpose behind their brilliance. At the Creation Club we boldly proclaim the truth that they were lovingly designed by our Creator God!]
Pygmy Mole Crickets Use Oar-Like Paddles to Jump Off Water’s Surface
How would a tiny bug get the instructions to make something so well-designed we would like to copy it, but struggle to develop equivalent materials? A wise Creator is the only truly logical and consistent way to look at them:
“The insect’s muscles have a protein called resilin, described as ‘the perfect elastic’.
Experts suggest that the makeup of the pygmy mole cricket’s legs could be used to build small aquatic robots. ‘If we want to make small robotic vehicles that move under water, this is how we would have to design propellers or oars,’ Burrows said in a statement. ‘We would also have to use a material as good as resilin to impart elasticity, restore shape, and reduce drag.'” ~Nature World News
Honeybees use social distancing to protect themselves against parasites
The lead author might be content to honor blind, random chance as the reason these bees collectively change their lifestyle in real time, but that’s a hard pill to swallow. There is no time for mutations to collect a change. And if it did happen to develop over millions of years, it certainly can’t change in a matter of days. To dynamically adjust their interactions based on the current need/risk value takes a lot more thought than “evolution” ever could. It took the genius programming of their true Creator God.
“Honeybees increase social distancing when their hive is under threat from a parasite, finds a new study led by an international team involving researchers at UCL and the University of Sassari, Italy…”Honeybee colonies provide an ideal model for studying social distancing and for fully understanding the value and effectiveness of this behaviour.
“Lead author Dr Michelina Pusceddu (Dipartimento di Agraria, University of Sassari) said: “The observed increase in social distancing between the two groups of bees within the same parasite-infested colony represents a new and, in some ways, surprising aspect of how honeybees have evolved to combat pathogens and parasites.” ~Science Daily.com
Fast, Efficient Neural Networks Copy Dragonfly Brains
This article is worth visiting to see the photos and read more about the mind-blowing skill and design of this predator of the insect world. If they would only let such wild claims as “it is possible that biological dragonflies have evolved additional tools to help with the calculations needed for this prediction” go! Not a chance, not in millions of years is it possible. These flying computer geniuses are no random accident, they are part of God’s masterpiece, the biological world.
“I and my colleagues at Sandia, a national-security laboratory, hope to take advantage of these insects’ specializations to design computing systems optimized for tasks like intercepting an incoming missile or following an odor plume. By harnessing the speed, simplicity, and efficiency of the dragonfly nervous system, we aim to design computers that perform these functions faster and at a fraction of the power that conventional systems consume…
“Dragonflies successfully capture up to 95 percent of the prey they pursue, eating hundreds of mosquitoes in a day.
“The physical prowess of the dragonfly has certainly not gone unnoticed. For decades, U.S. agencies have experimented with using dragonfly-inspired designs for surveillance drones…
“Being at Sandia, I immediately considered defense applications, such as missile defense, imagining missiles of the future with onboard systems designed to rapidly calculate interception trajectories without affecting a missile’s weight or power consumption. But there are civilian applications as well. For example, the algorithms that control self-driving cars might be made more efficient, no longer requiring a trunkful of computing equipment. If a dragonfly-inspired system can perform the calculations to plot an interception trajectory, perhaps autonomous drones could use it to avoid collisions…
“Dragonflies could also teach us how to implement “attention” on a computer.” ~Spectrum.ieee.org
Developing Butterfly Wing Scales Inspire Designers
“MIT engineers have captured the intricate choreography of butterfly scales forming during metamorphosis…The new visualizations also could serve as a blueprint for designing new functional materials, such as iridescent windows and waterproof textiles…
“‘Butterfly wings control many of their attributes by precisely forming the structural architecture of their wing scales,’ says lead author Anthony McDougal, a research assistant in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. ‘This strategy might be used, for example, to give both color and self-cleaning properties to automobiles and buildings. Now we can learn from butterflies’ structural control of these complex, micro-nanostructured materials.’…
“Researchers have tried to replicate the optical and structural properties of butterfly wings to design new solar cells and optical sensors, rain- and heat-resistant surfaces, and even paper currency patterned with iridescent encryptions to discourage counterfeiting. Knowing what processes butterflies harness to grow their scales could help to further direct this kind of bioinspired technology development.” ~Science Daily.com
