Sunday, 21 May 2017
Ladybug v. Darwin.
Ladybug, Living Origami, Lends a Hand with Umbrella and Other Designs
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer
Delicate and delightful, ladybug beetles are the insect everyone loves. Having one unexpectedly land on your hand is a reminder of how gentle and beautiful nature can be.
Their ability to alternate nimbly between walking and flying is also a marvel of design. Japanese scientists have been working on clarifying the secret of how they fold and unfold their wings, an effortless gesture of living origami. They published their findings in PNAS.
From USA Today:
Japanese scientists were curious to learn how ladybugs folded their wings inside their shells, so they surgically removed several ladybugs’ outer shells (technically called elytra) and replaced them with glued-on, artificial clear silicone shells to peer at the wings’ underlying folding mechanism.
Why bother with such seemingly frivolous research? It turns out that how the bugs naturally fold their wings can provide design hints for a wide range of practical uses for humans. This includes satellite antennas, microscopic medical instruments, and even everyday items like umbrellas and fans.
“The ladybugs’ technique for achieving complex folding is quite fascinating and novel, particularly for researchers in the fields of robotics, mechanics, aerospace and mechanical engineering,” said lead author Kazuya Saito of the University of Tokyo. [Emphasis added.]
That is astonishingly wide array of “design hints” from the humble bug, which are also called ladybirds. See the design in action:The Telegraph echoes:
Ladybird wings could help change design of umbrellas for first time in 1,000 years
The New York Times:
Ladybugs Pack Wings and Engineering Secrets in Tidy Origami Packages
[…]
To the naked eye, this elegant transformation is a mystery. But scientists in Japan created a window into the process in a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Just how the ladybug manages to cram these rigid structures into tiny spaces is a valuable lesson for engineers designing deployable structures like umbrellas and satellites.
A ladybug’s hind wings are sturdy enough to keep it in the air for up to two hours and enable it to reach speeds up to 37 miles an hour and altitudes as high as three vertically stacked Empire State Buildings. Yet they fold away with ease. These seemingly contradictory attributes perplexed Kazuya Saito, an aerospace engineer at the University of Tokyo and the lead author of the study.
Working on creating deployable structures like large sails and solar power systems for spacecrafts, he turned to the ladybug for design inspiration.
Notice how, in discussing them, it’s as if we are forced to use the language of design. Regarding ladybugs and their “engineering secrets,” as the NY Times candidly puts it, molecular biologist Douglas Axe tweets:“Like a DeLorean, only cooler!” Here is a DeLorean:In his book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, Dr. Axe uses the illustration of an origami crane. With good reason behind this universal intuition, our minds rebel at the idea that any origami creation could arise through a combination of chance and law, without purpose or design. Yet Darwinian theory demands that we believe a real crane arose that way, or a real ladybug.
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer
Delicate and delightful, ladybug beetles are the insect everyone loves. Having one unexpectedly land on your hand is a reminder of how gentle and beautiful nature can be.
Their ability to alternate nimbly between walking and flying is also a marvel of design. Japanese scientists have been working on clarifying the secret of how they fold and unfold their wings, an effortless gesture of living origami. They published their findings in PNAS.
From USA Today:
Japanese scientists were curious to learn how ladybugs folded their wings inside their shells, so they surgically removed several ladybugs’ outer shells (technically called elytra) and replaced them with glued-on, artificial clear silicone shells to peer at the wings’ underlying folding mechanism.
Why bother with such seemingly frivolous research? It turns out that how the bugs naturally fold their wings can provide design hints for a wide range of practical uses for humans. This includes satellite antennas, microscopic medical instruments, and even everyday items like umbrellas and fans.
“The ladybugs’ technique for achieving complex folding is quite fascinating and novel, particularly for researchers in the fields of robotics, mechanics, aerospace and mechanical engineering,” said lead author Kazuya Saito of the University of Tokyo. [Emphasis added.]
That is astonishingly wide array of “design hints” from the humble bug, which are also called ladybirds. See the design in action:The Telegraph echoes:
Ladybird wings could help change design of umbrellas for first time in 1,000 years
The New York Times:
Ladybugs Pack Wings and Engineering Secrets in Tidy Origami Packages
[…]
To the naked eye, this elegant transformation is a mystery. But scientists in Japan created a window into the process in a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Just how the ladybug manages to cram these rigid structures into tiny spaces is a valuable lesson for engineers designing deployable structures like umbrellas and satellites.
A ladybug’s hind wings are sturdy enough to keep it in the air for up to two hours and enable it to reach speeds up to 37 miles an hour and altitudes as high as three vertically stacked Empire State Buildings. Yet they fold away with ease. These seemingly contradictory attributes perplexed Kazuya Saito, an aerospace engineer at the University of Tokyo and the lead author of the study.
Working on creating deployable structures like large sails and solar power systems for spacecrafts, he turned to the ladybug for design inspiration.
Notice how, in discussing them, it’s as if we are forced to use the language of design. Regarding ladybugs and their “engineering secrets,” as the NY Times candidly puts it, molecular biologist Douglas Axe tweets:“Like a DeLorean, only cooler!” Here is a DeLorean:In his book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, Dr. Axe uses the illustration of an origami crane. With good reason behind this universal intuition, our minds rebel at the idea that any origami creation could arise through a combination of chance and law, without purpose or design. Yet Darwinian theory demands that we believe a real crane arose that way, or a real ladybug.
The fall of Rome.:The reboot
How to Protect Medical Conscience
Wesley J. Smith
Wesley J. Smith
Over at First Things, I have a piece up about the ongoing and accelerating campaign — most recently furthered by Ezekiel Emanuel — to drive pro-life and orthodox religious believers out of medicine by forcing their participation or complicity in acts in the medical sphere with which they have strong moral or religious objections.
There are currently some conscience protections in the law, but as the piece notes, they are under assault here and are already collapsing in other countries. From“Pro-Lifers Get Out of Medicine”:
The government of Ontario, Canada is on the verge of requiring doctors either to euthanize or to refer all legally qualified patients. In Victoria, Australia, all physicians must either perform an abortion when asked or find an abortionist for the patient.
One doctor has been disciplined under the law for refusing to refer for a sex-selective abortion. In Washington, a small pharmacy chain owned by a Christian family failed in its attempt to be excused from a regulation requiring all legal prescriptions to be dispensed, with a specific provision precluding conscience exemptions. The chain now faces a requirement to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill, against the owners’ religious beliefs.
In Vermont, a regulation obligates all doctors to discuss assisted suicide with their terminally ill patients as an end-of-life option, even if they are morally opposed. Litigation to stay this forced speech has, so far, been unavailing.
The ACLU recently commenced a campaign of litigation against Catholic hospitals that adhere to the Church’s moral teaching.
Here, I would like to share some ideas about how to shore up existing protections to best protect medical professionals from being forced into committing what they consider sinful or immoral acts. I suggest that the following general principles apply in crafting such protections:
Conscience protections should be legally binding.
The rights of conscience should apply to medical facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes as well as to individuals.
Except in the very rare and compelling circumstance in which a patient’s life is at stake, no medical professional should be compelled to perform or participate in procedures or treatments that take human life.
The rights of conscience should apply most strongly in elective procedures, that is, medical treatments not required to extend the life of, or prevent serious harm to, the patient.
It should be the procedure that is objectionable, not the patient. In this way, for example, physicians could not refuse to treat a lung-cancer patient because the patient smoked or to maintain the life of a patient in a vegetative state because the physician believed that people with profound impairments do not have a life worth living.
No medical professional should ever be forced to participate in a medical procedure intended primarily to facilitate the patient’s lifestyle preferences or desires (in contrast to maintaining life or treating a disease or injury).
To avoid conflicts and respect patient autonomy, patients should be advised, whenever feasible, in advance of a professional’s or facility’s conscientious objection to performing or participating in legal medical procedures or treatments.
The rights of conscience should be limited to bona fide medical facilities such as hospitals, skilled nursing centers, and hospices and to licensed medical professionals such as physicians, nurses, and pharmacists.
I am interested in other ideas on this subject, which I predict will become a firestorm issue in coming years.
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