Redesigning Our Future

By: Leah Picciano The turtle on the trail. Unfortunately for him, he was too cute to ignore. The Environmental Summit of 2013 spent a whole morning in the preserve. We saw many things, including a turtle, many spiders, salamanders, and plenty of mosquitoes. One of our more interesting finds were the turtle, which stayed still enough for us to get a close-up of him hiding in his shell. The turtle is a Eastern Painted Turtle common from Canada to Georgia and goes as far west as the Appalachians. They are very popular as pets. The large salamander that one of the campers caught afterwards . The salamanders were part of the biomimicry, but once we were finished, one of the campers caught a very large salamander, and we were able to hold it and take plenty of pictures of it. The spiders got us tangled in their webs, since they were all over the paths and in the woods. The mosquitoes were everywhere, despite all the spray that we put on. After the biomimicry when we had some...

By: Katie Trischman What We Did   The Environmental Summit of 2013 began its first day in Catawba's 189-acre ecological preserve to study a subject called biomimicry. Don't worry; that term sounded foreign to us as well before we began our geocaching adventure. With only a map and a GPS, each group set out to find their own sequence of geocache stations and slowly discover the possibilities of biomimicry.  Biomimicry is taking inspiration from nature and solving current issues with these models from nature. It sounds so surprisingly simple, yet humans have remained trapped in their ways of doing things for thousands of years. Where do we look for our solutions, and how do we translate the natural world into industry? We not only found inspiration in each station but also all around us in the marshy woodland of Catawba's ecological preserve .   What We Learned   Our amphibious friend: the salamander Our trek through the reserve wasn't all mo...

Geocache By Keela Sweeney After an exciting first day, our summit participants began day two with more than a bang! Visiting the ecological preserve to geocache and discover the many aspects of biomimicry was surely an adventure for everyone. Here are some of our students in the act. Left to Right: Rafaello, Shaina, Jessica, Emily, Sarah.                                       Photo By:Keela Sweeney Biomimicry is the process by which we emulate nature in order to better the human world. One great example of biomimicry we had the opportunity to discuss during our geo-cash yesterday was the salamander's ability to regenerate its limbs.  Simulating processes similar to the salamanders to do research on stem cells is an excellent use of this process.                     ...