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ARTICLE: Leaf Veins the Future of Water/Electricity Distribution Networks
FIRST 3 PARAGRAPHS:
A team of biophysicists at Rockefeller University recently published a paper in Physical Review Letters about a new way to design distribution networks based on the veins that carry water and nutrients in most tree leaves. This is a great example of biomimicry! Evolution by natural selection maybe be blind, but it has had billions of years of trial-and-error to figure out efficient and robust ways to do things. The interconnecting vein loops in leaves are a good example of that, and we can learn from them.
“Operations researchers have long believed that the best distribution networks for many scenarios look like trees, with a succession of branches stemming from a central stalk and then branches from those branches and so on, to the desired destinations. But this kind of network is vulnerable: If it is severed at any place, the network is cut in two and cargo will fail to reach any point “downstream” of the break.”
A good example of that can be seen on the two pictures in this post. The big dots are damage in the network. In the pic on top, you can see that the flow isn’t stopped, and can go everywhere in the network. In the second pic, the flow is stopped everywhere downstream of the damage point.
LINKS:
Treehugger
Science Daily
Rockefeller University
Physical Review Letters
Biomimicry Institute (Blog)
SNL Presidents for Wall Street Regulation
LINKS:
Funny Or Die
Huffington Post
Wall Street Journal
Chicago Tribune
Main Street Brigade
Source Watch: CFPA
