With millions of years of natural evolution, organisms have achieved sophisticated structures, patterns or textures with complex, spontaneous multifunctionality. Among all the fascinating characteristics observed in biosystems, self-cleaning ability is regarded as one of the most interesting topics in biomimicry because of its potential applications in various fields such as aerospace, energy c...

Over the last decade, significant effort has been put into mimicking the ability of the gecko lizard to strongly and reversibly cling to surfaces, by using synthetic structures. Among these structures, mushroom-like elastomer fiber arrays have demonstrated promising performance on smooth surfaces matching the adhesive strengths obtained with the natural gecko foot-pads. It is possible to improv...

Myanmar's recent transition from military rule towards a more democratic government has largely ended decades of political and economic isolation. Although Myanmar remains heavily forested, increased development in recent years has been accompanied by exceptionally high rates of forest loss. In this study, we document the rapid progression of deforestation in and around the proposed Lenya Natio...

Retinal extracts of Gekko gekko were found to contain two retinene(1) photopigments, one with maximum absorption at about 521 mmicro, the second with a maximum in the region of 478 mmicro. These pigments were assayed by the method of partial bleaching and their spectral characteristics studied by examining their difference spectra. The 478 mmicro pigment was present in the extracts as 8 per cen...

Since the 1 930s the common house gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus, a sexual species, has been inadvertently introduced to many tropical Pacific islands. Using markrecapture censuses and visual gecko searches we found that Lepidodactylus lugubris, an asexual gecko previously common on these islands, is nearly 800% more abundant on buildings in the urban/suburban environment on islands that lack H. ...