Water bear genomes reveal the secrets of extreme survival phys.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phys.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Tardigrades may be nature's ultimate survivors. While these tiny, nearly translucent animals are easily overlooked, they represent a diverse group that has successfully colonized freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments on every continent, including Antarctica.
Galipon
Tooth-like scales on shark skin reduce drag as they manoeuvre through the ocean, and they are at their most effective when the sharks accelerate.
Josephine Galipon at Keio University in Japan and her colleagues created synthetic shark skin from 3-D printed moulds based on scanning electron microscope images of skin samples from Pacific spiny dogfish (
Squalus suckleyi). They then covered an aeroplane wing-shaped model with the skin and studied the fluid dynamics – specifically, the vortices, or water swirls, left in the model’s wake – as they moved it through water.
In …