Entries Tagged "squid"
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Friday Squid Blogging: Build Your Own Virtual Squid
This site lets you build your own squid and let it loose in a virtual environment. You can even come back later and visit your squid.
Friday Squid Blogging: Researching Squid Bacteria
New research:
Intriguingly, that gene is the one that enables the bacteria to form a biofilm, the tightly woven matrix of “slime” which allows bacterial colonies to behave in many ways like a single organism. “The biofilm might be critical for adhering to the light organ, or telling the host that the correct symbiont has arrived,” says Mandel.
Biofilms also seem to be important in another kind of bacterial invasion of animals: disease. Some normally harmless lung bacteria can turn into a nasty infection in humans by forming a biofilm, for example, while many immune defences are aimed at preventing biofilms. And certain bacteria, like Vibrio fischeri, typically invade only certain species and tissues.
Friday Squid Blogging: Jumbo Squid Teeth
They’re strong and lightweight:
The teeth get their strength from architecture. A series of tooth pores runs through the protein, and on the outer edge the pores are spaced widely for a hard, shape edge that digs into the flesh of hapless prey. Toward the base, the pores are closer together, making a softer material that can absorb the prey’s thrashing without breaking.
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Cake
Doesn’t really look all that tasty.
Friday Squid Blogging: Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device (SQUID)
New security device:
But what if an officer could lay down a road trap in seconds, then activate it from a nearby hiding place? What if—like sea monsters of ancient lore—the trap could reach up from below to ensnare anything from a MINI Cooper to a Ford Expedition? What if this trap were as small as a spare tire, as light as a tire jack, and cost under a grand?
Thanks to imaginative design and engineering funded by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), such a trap may be stopping brigands by 2010. It’s called the Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device, or SQUID. When closed, the current prototype resembles a cheese wheel full of holes. When open (deployed), it becomes a mass of tentacles entangling the axles. By stopping the axles instead of the wheels, SQUID may change how fleeing drivers are, quite literally, caught.
Of course, there’s a lot separating a cool idea from reality. But it is a cool idea.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.