Bio-mimicry presents itself in aerodynamics, from the emulation of soaring bird’s wing shapes on sailplane’s surfaces to owl-feather-like trailing edges on wind turbines. We don’t often think of biological equivalents in energy storage (your editor didn’t until now, at least). But researchers at Cambridge University in England and the Beijing Institute of Technology in China have turned to the small intestine for their breakthrough in battery development. Tiny cells lining the human intestine inspired these researchers to develop a prototype of a lithium-sulfur battery that they claim could have five times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion batteries. Dr. Paul Coxon from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy says “This gets us a long way through the bottleneck which is preventing the development of better batteries.” Is That You, Villi? Villi in the gut help process food being digested, trapping nutrient particles in millions of tiny, “finger-like protrusions” which increase the absorbent surface area over which digestion takes place. …
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