Although LEDs are more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, most commercial models are reportedly only about 50 percent efficient at emitting the light that they generate. This is known as their light extraction efficiency, and researchers have drastically increased it by copying fireflies.
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Honeybees are increasingly under threat. To help save these creatures from extinction, researchers from York University have found a group of genes that appears to be related to how hygienic a particular colony of bees is, and selective breeding for these genes could help fight colony collapse.
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It goes without saying that when your appetite is satiated, you're no longer interested in eating. Well, scientists have devised a method of artificially inducing that "full" feeling in mosquitoes, thus keeping them from going after humans for blood meals.
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If you don't like the idea of applying conventional insect repellant to your skin, but you still don't want to get bitten, there could be new hope on the horizon. According to a study conducted in Hungary, you may be able to ward off bugs simply by painting white stripes on your body.
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Caterpillars are able to crawl across a wide variety of surfaces, they can move in any orientation, and they're flexible – traits that would also make for good soft-bodied robots. With that in mind, scientists have recently taken an interesting approach to analyzing just how the creatures move.
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Xenos peckii is a parasitic insect that spends much of its life cycle within the body of a wasp, but it's also known for its unusual eye structure. By copying that structure, scientists have created an ultra-slim camera that could allow for the manufacturing of thinner-than-ever smartphones.
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Mystrium camillae, a rare species of Dracula ant found in Southeast Asia and Australia, has now snapped up the crown for fastest animal movement on record, clicking its mandibles at blistering speeds that can stun prey.
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Our drones are pretty handy, but nature’s drones – bees – are far more efficient. Rather than building our own from scratch, researchers at the University of Washington have created tiny suites of sensors that bees can wear like backpacks, to help gather data from their environment.
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As harmful bacteria continue to become resistant to standard antibiotics, it gets increasingly important to come up with alternatives. With that in mind, scientists at MIT have looked to a species of wasp, and found an effective antibiotic in its venom.
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Bats eat a lot of moths, which they locate in the dark via echolocation. According to new research, however, some moths have evolved sound-absorbing fur as a passive means of defence – and it could inspire advances in human technology.
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