Entries Tagged "squid"

Page 95 of 108

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Beaks for Artificial Limbs?

Scientists are considering it:

The beak, made of hard chitin and other materials, changes density gradually from the hard tip to a softer, more flexible base where it attaches to the muscle around the squid’s mouth, the researchers found.

That means the tough beak can chomp away at fish for dinner, but the hard material doesn’t press or rub directly against the squid’s softer tissues.

Herbert Waite, a professor in the university’s department of molecular, cellular & developmental biology and co-author of the paper, said such graduated materials could have broad applications in biomedical materials.

“Lots of useful information could some out of this for implant materials, for example. Interfaces between soft and hard materials occur everywhere,” he said in a telephone interview.

Frank Zok, professor and associate chair of the department of materials, said he had always been skeptical of whether there is any real advantage to materials that change their properties gradually from one part to another, “but the squid beak turned me into a believer.”

“If we could reproduce the property gradients that we find in squid beak, it would open new possibilities for joining materials,” Zok said in a statement. “For example, if you graded an adhesive to make its properties match one material on one side and the other material on the other side, you could potentially form a much more robust bond.”

The researchers are learning lessons that can be applied to medical materials in the future, said Phillip B. Messersmith of the department of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University.

Messersmith, who was not part of the research team, noted that hard medical implants made of metal or ceramic are often imbedded in soft tissues.

“The lessons here from nature might be useful in transitions between devices and the tissues they are imbedded in,” he said in a telephone interview.

More on squid beaks.

Posted on April 4, 2008 at 4:38 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Plastinated Squid

In Paris:

France’s National Museum of Natural History on Tuesday unveiled the world’s first “plastinated” squid—a 6.5-metre-long (21.25-feet) deep-sea beast donated by New Zealand and named in honour of a creature featuring in Maori legend.

Plastination entails replacing the animal’s water, fat and other liquids with a polymer that hardens.

It means the specimen can be appreciated in three dimensions in a dry, solid state, rather than in a jar filled with formalin or alcohol, whose glass distorts the view.

The squid was hauled up in January 2000 at a depth of 615 metres (2,000 feet) by fishermen off New Zealand.

[…]

The 65,000-euro (100,000-dollar) plastination, carried out by Italian lab VisDocta Research, took two and a half years, during which the specimen of Architeuthis sanctipauli lost 2.5 metres (seven feet) of its length through drying out.

Wheke is being given pride of place in the Paris museum’s Great Gallery of Evolution, its centrepiece exhibit on biodiversity.

The giant squid, Architeuthis, of which there are three sub-species, is a potent source of maritime tales of tentacled monsters able to grab a ship and pull it down to its doom. The critter memorably featured in Jules Vernes’ “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” trying to engulf the submarine Nautilus.

In real life, though, the species is rather less gigantic—about 13 metres (42.25 feet) from the caudal fin to the tip of its suckered tentacles. Females are larger than males.

Posted on March 28, 2008 at 4:29 PM • View Comments

1 … 93 94 95 96 97 … 108

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.