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life's been on earth for 3.8 billion
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years and in that time life has learned
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what works and and what's appropriate
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here and what lasts here and the idea is
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that um perhaps we should be looking at
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these mentors at these biological elders
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they have figured out how to create a
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sustainable world
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so rather than inventing it from scratch
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um why don't we take our our cues from
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them it's these are earth savvy
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adaptations and the consummate life is
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these organisms are the consummate
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engineers they're the consummate
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chemists and technologists they've
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learned how to do it in context so
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that's the core idea behind bio memory
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um is that that the best ideas might not
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be ours you might already have been
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invented
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I'll mimicry is innovation inspired by
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nature it's a new discipline in which
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the people that make our world are
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chemists and architects material
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scientists and product designers they
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ask themselves what in the natural world
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has already solved what it is I'm trying
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to solve and then they try to emulate
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what they've learned our work as a
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species is to create designs and and
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strategies that move us towards being
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better adapted to life on Earth
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over the long haul and when you when you
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ask how to be better adapted to this
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planet there are no better models than
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the species that have preceded us for
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billions of years you know there are
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thirty to a hundred million species
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maybe more and in all that diversity um
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there is a hidden unity um there are a
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set of operating instructions how to be
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an earthling and their their life's
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principles like life runs on sunlight
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except for a few organisms in sulfur
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vents at the bottom of the ocean life
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runs on current sunlight we run on
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ancient photosynthesis trapped in fossil
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fuels life does it's chemistry in water
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as the universal solvent and we tend to
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use very very toxic solvents like
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sulfuric acid life depends on local
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expertise organisms have to understand
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their places they have to know the
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limits and the opportunities of their
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places and life banks on diversity and
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rewards cooperation life waste nothing
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up cycles everything and most of all
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does not foul its nest does not foul its
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home we're a very young species and
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probably our best stance as a young
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species is to be apprentices to these
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masters
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we need to replace our old industrial
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chemistry book with nature's recipe book
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our synthetic chemistry is completely
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different ten nature's chemistry we use
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every element in a periodic table
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even the toxic ones and then we use
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brute force reactions to to get elements
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to bond or break apart life uses a small
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subset of the periodic table is the safe
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elements and then very very elegant
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recipes low temperature low pressures
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low toxicity that's nature's chemistry
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it's a very different paradigm and we
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have to ask ourselves not just how to
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replace individual molecules for
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different kinds of molecules but rather
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whole families of reactions it's a big
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job to do that ah but it's it's an
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Apollo project worth pursuing
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organisms make materials in and near
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their own body so they can't afford to
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heat things up to astronomical
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temperatures or to use toxins or high
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pressures so for instance a spider it
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takes what comes into its web a fly
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flies into its web it takes that it does
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chemistry and water at room temperature
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at very low pressures and it creates
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this amazing fiber that ounce per ounce
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is five times stronger than steel and
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this is being looked at now by fiber
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manufacturers
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nature's also really good at making hard
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materials like ceramics if you take the
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inside of an abalone shell which is that
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iridescent mother-of-pearl why material
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is twice as tough as our high-tech
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ceramics and what those mother-of-pearl
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layers are composed of is just very
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simple materials in seawater so what
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happens is the soft bodied critter
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releases a protein into the seawater
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creates a template and on this template
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there's charged landing sites and the
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calcium and carbonate in the seawater is
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also charged and it lands in particular
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sites which directs the crystallization
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automatic self-assembly crystallization
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of this incredible material and and
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actually it's a self-healing material
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beautiful architecture incredibly benign
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manufacturing and people are figuring
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out how to make ceramics without ever
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using a kiln and this has been looked at
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for both reasons for the blueprint and
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for the recipe of how you self-assemble
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out of seawater um a hard material
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the one thing that we have an awful lot
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of is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
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and we think of it as the poison of our
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era life sees carbon dioxide as a
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building block carbon dioxide is used by
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plants to make sugars and starches and
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cellulose it's used by organisms in the
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sea to make their shells and to make
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coral reefs and that chemistry that's
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co2 to stuff chemistry is now being
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mimicked so Nova mer is a company that
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takes carbon dioxide and turns it into
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biodegradable plastics there's also a
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company called new light and their
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products called air carbon and they're
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taking methane which is an even worse
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greenhouse gas and they're using that to
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create packaging Della's using all their
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packaging now made out of this air
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carbon it's called there are chairs made
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from it the first carbon negative chairs
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in the world made of this kind of
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plastic that comes from co2
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the most used building material on the
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planet is concrete the manufacturer of
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concrete produces five to eight percent
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of all co2 emissions when you look at a
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coral reef which is a concrete like
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structure you realize that co2 is
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actually sequestered so there's a
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company called blue planet that is now
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taking the recipe from the coral reef
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and they're taking co2 from flue stacks
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and they're taking seawater putting
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those together and precipitating out the
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raw materials for concrete and in fact
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they're now able to sequester a half a
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ton of co2 for every ton of concrete so
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if you can imagine someday us using
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carbon dioxide and sequestering it
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long-term geological sequestration in
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the buildings that are all around us
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that's what's exciting about biomimicry
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you say to yourself there's existence
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fruits that there's another way to do
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this
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in the arena of conserving energy
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there's a software company called regen
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and they've studied how ants and E's
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communicate to one another in order to
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find food sources and and to help
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streamline their foraging and what
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they've done is they've applied these
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algorithms to sensors that they're able
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to put on appliances and drastically
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reduce peak demand by 25 to 30 percent
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reducing energy bills by having these
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appliances communicate with one another
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and dial down the need for energy at
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Caltech students have come up with a new
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kind of wind farm that's based on how
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fish move in a school so when Fisher are
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moving they group together and the ones
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in the front as with our cinemas
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movements they kind of throw off
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vortices these little spirals in the
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water and then the ones behind them
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curve around those spirals and actually
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they get flung upstream saving a lot of
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energy so what these students did was
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they said why don't we take vertical
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axis wind turbines and instead of
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spreading them out on the landscape like
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you would with traditional wind turbines
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why don't we pack them as closely as
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possible together and they did this and
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they found that when the first axis is
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turned they would create these spirals
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and the ones behind them would start to
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turn even before the wind hit them and I
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got ten times more wind power out of a
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wind farm this way for a with a lot less
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land use
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one of the things that erst e planet
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will need is a way to find more fresh
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water
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the Namibian beetle lives in the Namib
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Desert drinks entirely from the fog that
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comes in a few times a week it has these
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special structures on its wing scales
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that condense the water out of fog very
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very efficiently ten times better than
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our fog catching Nets this Namibian
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beetle effect has been mimicked by many
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companies trying to make new fog
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catching nets for agriculture along fog
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coasts there's also a small company
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that's called NBD Nano and they're
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creating the fog catching surface along
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the inside of a water bottle and
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creating a self filling water bottle
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that will fill itself with the humidity
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in the air life is really good at
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filtering especially to recover fresh
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water if you think about a fish every
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fish in the ocean is a desalination
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plant it's living on fresh water in its
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cells but it has to create that fresh
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water from salt water so it's
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desalinating so this this idea of
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nature's membranes we even have them in
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our bodies we have them in our kidneys
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and in our red blood cells and we have
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these little pores called aquaporins and
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what they do is they actually because of
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their shape and their charges they are
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perfect for water molecules water
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molecules are attracted to the pores to
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the channels and then they move through
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them very very easily leaving everything
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else behind and that's been mimicked in
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a membrane with a company a danish
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company called aquaporin and they're
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doing desalination membranes that
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instead of the energy intensive reverse
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osmosis which pushes water against a
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membrane they're using the aquaporin
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membrane to pull water molecules through
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in something called forward osmosis a
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fraction of the energy
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use and about a hundred times more
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permeable than the normal membranes that
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we use in our big desalination plants
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agriculture is one of our biggest uses
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of water and if we can find a way to
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grow plants with with less water that's
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gonna go a long way for a thirsty planet
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what scientists are doing is that
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they're looking at places where plants
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are growing in extreme conditions and
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asking how are you doing that guy named
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rusty Rodriguez went to the Yellowstone
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hot springs and these hot pools have a
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grass growing around them called panic
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grass which shouldn't technically be
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able to live in those conditions but he
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dug down in the roots and he found that
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there was a fungal helper wrapped around
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the reed that was allowing the plant to
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grow in these very hot conditions and he
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was able to inoculate seeds with a
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fungus that enabled the plant to grow
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five times more rice with half the water
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use which is really really important if
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we're talking about a climate changed
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world where drought is the new normal
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it's really interesting is sometimes you
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are asking yourself how to replace a
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chemical and when you loop to the
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natural world you realize there's a big
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paradigm shift because you don't even
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need the chemical life often uses shape
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instead of chemistry so for instance
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paints these are chemical pigments often
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we use really toxic materials like
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chromium or cadmium in our paints and
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the question is can you create color
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without chemistry can you create it with
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structure turns out that the some of the
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most brilliant organisms in the natural
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world create their color through playing
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with light so structure so this is these
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are the hummingbirds Emma and the morpho
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butterflies and the peacocks a peacocks
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feather is has no pigment in and except
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for brown all of those colors that you
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see are created from very simple layers
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that are certain distance apart and when
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light comes through it gets bent it gets
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refracted it gets amplified to create
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the color blue to your eye or the color
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yellow or the color gold all without
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chemistry
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it's just structure and structural color
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is four times brighter than pigmented
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color never fades imagine if we were
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able to create products where the last
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few dip coatings of the surface of the
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product say a car would be transparent
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layers that played with light in such a
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way to create a color no painting no
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repainting it's built right into the
00:16:07
structure of the product another kind of
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chemistry that we're always looking for
00:16:12
alternatives to is a better soap a
00:16:14
better way of cleaning without
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phosphates and other things in our
00:16:18
wastewater
00:16:19
life also has to stay clean
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imagine a leaf a leaf has to stay clean
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in order to photosynthesize so
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scientists a couple of decades ago put a
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lotus leaf put that under a microscope
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and found that the way it stays clean
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it's not a chemical solution it's
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actually a structural solution has tiny
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bumps there are certain distance apart
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and they're waxy and rainwater balls up
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on this surface and dirt particles don't
00:16:50
really adhere they they kind of Teeter
00:16:52
on the mountaintops and the ball of rain
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when the leaf tilts picks up those dirt
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particles as it rolls off pearls it away
00:17:02
and it's become known as the Lotus
00:17:04
effect so now there's all kinds of
00:17:06
products there's there's a fabrics with
00:17:09
the Lotus effect Big Sky Technologies
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does that and and shoulder and there's
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roofing tiles Earl estroux f---ing tiles
00:17:16
there's a paint from a company called
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Stowe called Lotus in' and when it dries
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it has that bumpy structure so that dirt
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really can't adhere and rainwater cleans
00:17:29
the building instead of sandblasting or
00:17:33
applying chemicals and soap so it's a
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whole new way of cleaning it's another
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one of those paradigm flips that you
00:17:40
often see in the natural world when you
00:17:42
look to nature for for solutions
00:17:49
the big problem of superbugs in
00:17:52
hospitals and the fact that we use so
00:17:54
many antibiotics in order to to battle
00:17:58
bacteria so for instance there's a
00:18:00
company called sharklet they said is
00:18:02
there how does nature manage bacteria
00:18:05
they found this very interesting shark
00:18:07
the Galapagos shark which is a basking
00:18:09
shark that has no bacteria on its
00:18:13
surface even though it doesn't move very
00:18:15
much it has no bacteria on its surface
00:18:17
how is that possible
00:18:19
well the shape of its skin turns out to
00:18:23
be something that bacteria do not like
00:18:25
to land on or to form their films on so
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by mimicking that shape sharklet
00:18:30
technologies has created thin films that
00:18:34
you can put on door knobs and hospital
00:18:38
railing bed railings and and all kinds
00:18:41
of surfaces and what it what the shape
00:18:43
does is it actually repels the bacteria
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it's a shield against bacterial
00:18:49
infection but it's not done with
00:18:51
chemistry it's done with structure
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you know the answers we seek the secrets
00:19:02
to a sustainable world are literally all
00:19:05
around us and if we choose to truly
00:19:12
mimic life's genius ah the future I see
00:19:17
would be beauty and abundance and
00:19:22
certainly fewer regrets in the natural
00:19:26
world definition of success is the
00:19:29
continuity of life you keep yourself
00:19:31
alive
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and you keep your offspring a lot that's
00:19:34
success but it's not the offspring in
00:19:37
this generation success is keeping your
00:19:39
offspring alive 10,000 generations and
00:19:43
more and that presents a conundrum
00:19:46
because you cannot you're not gonna be
00:19:50
there to take care of your offspring
00:19:50
10,000 generations from now so what
00:19:54
organisms have learned to do is to take
00:19:57
care of the place that's gonna take care
00:20:01
of their offspring life has learned to
00:20:03
create conditions conducive to life and
00:20:07
that's really the magic heart of it life
00:20:13
creates conditions conducive to life and
00:20:16
that's also the design brief for us
00:20:20
right now we have to learn how to do
00:20:22
that and luckily we're surrounded by the
00:20:26
answers and you know millions of species
00:20:29
willing to gift us with their best ideas
00:21:06
you
00:21:27
you
00:21:28
you
00:21:36
you
