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Stele depicting the Kassite goddess Lama.  Circa 1307–1282 B.C.  Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

~Hasmonean

I said I was sorry.

I may be awkward sometimes But

at least i did not say “neat”

In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed after a hunting trip that burrs from burdock plants stuck to his pants and his dog’s fur. 

He took the seed and looked at them through a microscope to find that this seed attaches to animal fur via the hooks on its surface to improve distribution.

                               Source: All of Nature on Blogspot

These hooks would latch onto anything loop-shaped, such as the fibers in his pants and his dog’s tangled fur. This inspired him to come up with the ‘Velcro’.

Velcro is a bio-mimicry of this burrs with small flexible hooks attached on its surface to attach to fluffy surfaces.

Although it goes by the name Velcro the generic name is a  hook-and-loop fastener)  

And depending on the load that needs to be held there are different types of hooks that are available:

The sound that the velcro makes when you rip it apart is oddly satisfying. It is made when the loops are ripped apart from the hooks.

It was always in my head that the hooks or the loops would break whenever you would rip it apart. But turns out, they are extremely flexible.

                                                Source

For a long time I believed that this was the end of the story and that’s how far we had gone. But recently when I was trying to mount a board to the wall, I came across the 3M dual lock fasteners.

These use a mushroom shaped hook on both the sides to snap together in place.

                                                  Source

And evidently it turns out the mushroom fastener design were inspired from dragonflies who used it for stability during mating (check source video above for more).

This is great, but since this is made of plastic this surely would fail at higher temperatures. You need something robust to handle higher temperatures, and this is where the Metaklett comes into the picture:

A square metre of this fastener, called Metaklett (made of steel), is capable of supporting 35 tonnes at temperatures up to 800 ºC,  (Video)

There is something exotic in the blend of nature and technology that is manifested in the Velcro, I just cannot put my hand on what it is.

Have a great day!

Cotton Rat Skull

My first rat skull, found it in Florida all dried up next to our condo. Judging by the fur color, fur texture, and S shaped molars I THINK its a hispid cotton rat. There were a few of these little guys running around and they didn’t look like normal rats to me. But idk, there’s really no way for me to tell for certain just by skull measurements.  I’m not quite that good at bone identification yet. 

Qatar National Library by OMA 

 The Library by Rem Koolhaas

The physical impact of books has been important in terms of my entire formation. The first books that fascinated me were the fairy tales of Grim illustrated by Gustave Doré. I still remember the physical nature of those books as one of the strongest memories of my entire life. In the 1950s I would spend time in the library of the Stedelijk Museum – almost like in a living room. My first intersection of writing and architecture was Delirious New York, which I wrote in the New York Public Library, going through microfilms, old newspapers, and books. I made one particular seat my own, almost day and night.

One similarity between architecture and bookmaking is that both have unbelievably long traditions but are also forced to be of the moment, constantly updating in order to survive. We have designed many libraries and built a few. Libraries, as a typology, are so exceptionally suitable to produce radical architecture. Apparently, there is a paradox that such a traditional form produces inventive solutions, and that is the case for the Qatar National Library. The building is 138 meters long, equivalent to the length of two 747s. This is not to boast about scale but because from the beginning the idea was to make reading as accessible and as stimulating as possible to the population of Qatar as a whole. We thought we could achieve that by creating a building that was almost a single room, not divided in different sections, certainly not into separate floors.

We took a plate and folded its corners up to create terraces for the books, but also to enable access in the center of the room. You emerge immediately surrounded by literally every book – all physically present, visible, and accessible, without any particular effort. The library is a space that could contain an entire population, and also an entire population of books…

what is a god to a scientist?

oh, that is quite literally eating something alive. I’m sure it’s very fresh! and severed tentacles grow back remarkably well, as if they were never gone, in about six weeks. Which may or may nor be relevant, depending on their fishing practices.

just woke up from one hell of a nightmare i need a distraction…

Sharpless 249 and the Jellyfish Nebula

Image Credit & Copyright: Albert Barr

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Genetics are weird and interesting!!

From Twitter.