Design features

Amazing eyes show amazing design and confound evolution

Does evolution give a sound explanation for the arrival of acoustics? They say the earth was mostly quiet for billions of years, but is that an argument from silence?

A farmer plants a seed. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how …

Recent discoveries about heme pose problems for evolutionary theory

Wilderness adventurer and photographer Bill Boehm tells how nature reveals its creator

Accident and adaptation, or divine design?

Even the best supercomputers struggle to solve the ‘Travelling Salesman Problem’. Yet bees do it as a matter of course.

The shrimp eye has an intricately structured reflective layer to focus light. Engineers would like to be able to copy the structure.

It’s the hardest substance in the human body. But be warned: If you’re slack with your dental hygiene, fixing your tooth enamel ain’t easy.

What does it tell us about the evolution of flight?

Natural selection can only select for the attributes an organism needs to survive, so how is it that creatures are endowed with a whole lot more than necessary?

The bacterium has “remarkable” and “sophisticated” nano-scale electric motors

A key design feature of modern golf balls has been found on sharks, too.

Lucien Tuinstra dialogues with Dutchman Prof. Hans Degens

Can evolution explain the origin of systems underlying circadian rhythms?

Wind tunnel videos have revealed some unexpected aerodynamic characteristics of locust wings, which design engineers of small robotic aircraft want to copy.