Exoskeleton

They don’t call it the diabolical ironclad beetle for nothing: Phloeodes diabolicus, a rugged insect native to western North America, has an almost supernatural ability to resist compression and blunt hits. Now, 3D scans have revealed that layered structures in its interlocking wing cases make the beetle twice as hardy as…

NEW YORK (AP) — It's a beetle that can withstand bird pecks, animal stomps and even being rolled over by a Toyota Camry. Now scientists are studying what the bug’s crush-resistant shell could teach them about designing stronger planes and buildings.“This beetle is super tough," said Purdue University civil engineer…

Home News Crush-resistant elytra — hardened exoskeletal forewings — protect the diabolical ironclad beetle against piercing and crushing predatory strikes. (Image: © David Kisalius) Diabolical ironclad beetles are almost unbreakable — you can smack them, stomp on them or run them over with a car, and they'll scamper away uncrushed.Now,…

It’s dark. Vegetal decay hangs thick in the air, trapped beneath the rotting innards of a felled beech tree. You wedge the hard shell of your exoskeleton through softening pulp, legs clicking in rhythm with each other. Chemosensors on your antennae and mouthparts ping with a steady stream of information,…

Researchers have developed a way for early Mars travelers to build pretty much whatever they need using a fibrous material found on Earth. Chitin, which is found in the shells of sea creatures and insects, can be used to create rigid objects like tools. NASA expects the first crewed Mars…

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Dimitris Siskopoulos/Wiki commonc, CC BY-SA Let’s turn back the hands of time. Before extinction knocked dinosaurs off their pillar, before the “Great Dying” extinction wiped out 95% of all organisms – we had the Paleozoic Era.During this age in Earth’s history, between 541 million and 252 million years ago, arthropods…

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Alice Pegna is an interior designer based in Paris. After her studies at the Ateliers de Sèvres and the Camondo school in Paris, she started her career in architecture without giving up her personal artistic projects, always oriented towards the study of the structures that make up nature. “Ex-Nihilo” is…

This is how it starts. My brother’s school asks me to be a guest teacher for their Day of Mauritian Literature. His lycée is part of the French system: private, proud, with only three or four such schools across the island. They are the institutions of choice for wealthy Mauritian…