It is a thrill to be here at a conference that's devoted to "Inspired by Nature" -- you can imagine. And I'm also thrilled to be in the foreplay section. Did you notice this section is foreplay? Because I get to talk about one of my favorite critters, which is the Western Grebe. You haven't lived until you've seen these guys do their courtship dance. I was on Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park, which is a long, skinny lake with sort of mountains upside down in it, and my partner and I have a rowing shell. And so we were rowing, and one of these Western Grebes came along. And what they do for their courtship dance is, they go together, the two of them, the two mates, and they begin to run underwater. They paddle faster, and faster, and faster, until they're going so fast that they literally lift up out of the water, and they're standing upright, sort of paddling the top of the water. And one of these Grebes came along while we were rowing. And so we're in a skull, and we're moving really, really quickly. And this Grebe, I think, sort of, mistaked us for a prospect, and started to run along the water next to us, in a courtship dance -- for miles. It would stop, and then start, and then stop, and then start. Now that is foreplay. (Laughter)
各位可以想像 — 能在這裡參加這個討論 「自然的啟發」的研討會實在非常榮幸。 我也很開心被安排在「導論」這一節。 你們有沒有注意到這一節演說是導論? 因為我可以談談我最喜歡的生物之一, 那就是北美鷿鷈。你一輩子一定要看過 這些傢伙跳求偶舞才算真正活過。 我當時在蒙大拿冰河國家公園的波曼湖上, 那是一個狹長的湖,湖面上有群峰的倒影, 我和我的伴侶有一艘小船。 當我們在划船的時候,來了一隻北美鷿鷈。 他們的求偶舞就是,兩隻北美鷿鷈, 兩隻這樣併排在一起,開始在水面下奔跑。 牠們的雙蹼愈划愈快,愈划愈快, 快到最後身體從水中騰起, 身體直立,就像是輕功水上飄一般,在水面上奔跑。 我們划船的時候,來了一隻北美鷿鷈。 我們划著小船,划得非常非常快。 而這隻鷿鷈,我猜,大概是把我們誤認為可能的對象, 開始在我們旁邊的水域跑了起來, 跳著求偶舞,跑了好幾英里。 牠會停下來,又開始,停下來,又開始。 這,才叫前戲吧!(註:原文與導論同) (笑聲)
I came this close to changing species at that moment. Obviously, life can teach us something in the entertainment section. Life has a lot to teach us. But what I'd like to talk about today is what life might teach us in technology and in design. What's happened since the book came out -- the book was mainly about research in biomimicry -- and what's happened since then is architects, designers, engineers -- people who make our world -- have started to call and say, we want a biologist to sit at the design table to help us, in real time, become inspired. Or -- and this is the fun part for me -- we want you to take us out into the natural world. We'll come with a design challenge and we find the champion adapters in the natural world, who might inspire us.
好,我承認,我當時差一點就要改當鷿鷈了。 在娛樂方面,生命顯然可以教導我們一些事情 生命可以教導我們的其實很多。 但是我今天所要談的, 是在科技與設計領域,生命可以教我們什麼。 自從我的書出版以後, 書中主要談的是仿生學的研究。 書出版了以後,建築師、設計師、工程師 那些打造我們這個世界的人,開始打電話給我說, 我們想要一個生物學家跟我們一起坐在設計桌旁, 即時幫助我們啟發靈感。 或者,這是我喜歡的部份,我們希望你帶我們 到自然界中探險。我們會提出設計上的難題 然後在自然界中找到那些可以提供靈感的適存者。
So this is a picture from a Galapagos trip that we took with some wastewater treatment engineers; they purify wastewater. And some of them were very resistant, actually, to being there. What they said to us at first was, you know, we already do biomimicry. We use bacteria to clean our water. And we said, well, that's not exactly being inspired by nature. That's bioprocessing, you know; that's bio-assisted technology: using an organism to do your wastewater treatment is an old, old technology called "domestication." This is learning something, learning an idea, from an organism and then applying it. And so they still weren't getting it.
這張照片是我們去加拉巴哥旅行時拍的。 同行的是一群廢水處理工程師; 他們的工作是純化廢水。 他們當中有些人其實很不想去。 一開始他們跟我們說,「我們已經在應用仿生學了」 「我們用細菌來處理廢水」 我們說,嗯這並不算是從大自然中找靈感。 那是生物處理, 是生物輔助技術: 使用生物來處理廢水 是一種非常、非常古老的技術,叫做「馴養。」 仿生學是從生物上學習,得到靈感並加以應用。 然而他們還是不懂。
So we went for a walk on the beach and I said, well, give me one of your big problems. Give me a design challenge, sustainability speed bump, that's keeping you from being sustainable. And they said scaling, which is the build-up of minerals inside of pipes. And they said, you know what happens is, mineral -- just like at your house -- mineral builds up. And then the aperture closes, and we have to flush the pipes with toxins, or we have to dig them up. So if we had some way to stop this scaling -- and so I picked up some shells on the beach. And I asked them, what is scaling? What's inside your pipes? And they said, calcium carbonate. And I said, that's what this is; this is calcium carbonate.
所以我們在海灘上走著,我說, 提一個你們最大的困難給我。給我一個設計上的難題, 永續性的絆腳石, 讓設計達不到永續標準的問題。 他們回答:水垢,也就是礦物質在水管裡沈積。 大家知道 就跟家裡的水垢一樣,礦物質會沈積。 然後水管會被阻塞,我們就必須用有毒的溶劑去沖洗水管, 或是使用物理方法把它們挖出來。 所以如果能夠阻止水垢沈積... 聽完以後我撿起海灘上的一 些貝殼。我問他們, 水垢是什麼?水管裡的東西是什麼? 他們說,碳酸鈣。 然後我就說,這就是了; 貝殼也是碳酸鈣。
And they didn't know that. They didn't know that what a seashell is, it's templated by proteins, and then ions from the seawater crystallize in place to create a shell. So the same sort of a process, without the proteins, is happening on the inside of their pipes. They didn't know. This is not for lack of information; it's a lack of integration. You know, it's a silo, people in silos. They didn't know that the same thing was happening. So one of them thought about it and said, OK, well, if this is just crystallization that happens automatically out of seawater -- self-assembly -- then why aren't shells infinite in size? What stops the scaling? Why don't they just keep on going? And I said, well, in the same way that they exude a protein and it starts the crystallization -- and then they all sort of leaned in -- they let go of a protein that stops the crystallization. It literally adheres to the growing face of the crystal. And, in fact, there is a product called TPA that's mimicked that protein -- that stop-protein -- and it's an environmentally friendly way to stop scaling in pipes.
他們本來不知道這件事。 他們不知道貝殼其實是 先有蛋白質組成的模板,然後海水中的離子 照著模板結晶,就這樣形成貝殼。 所以類似的程序,只是少了蛋白質, 也在他們的水管中發生,但他們並不曉得。 這並不是資訊不足,而是缺乏整合 。 是不同領域各自為政,缺乏交流。他們不知道 同樣的事情也在其他領域發生。他們當中有個人 想了想說,好,如果這只是結晶現象 在海水中自然產生,自我組裝, 為什麼貝殼不會長到無限大?是什麼停止了沈積過程? 貝殼為甚麼不會長個不停? 我說,就像它們釋放蛋白質 來啟動結晶現象... 這時工程師們都靠了過來, 貝殼也會釋放蛋白質來中止結晶現象。 蛋白質會吸附在結晶生長的那一面。 事實上,有一種叫做 TPA 的產品 模仿了這個終止蛋白。 這是一個環保的方法,可以避免水管長水垢。
That changed everything. From then on, you could not get these engineers back in the boat. The first day they would take a hike, and it was, click, click, click, click. Five minutes later they were back in the boat. We're done. You know, I've seen that island. After this, they were crawling all over. They would snorkel for as long as we would let them snorkel. What had happened was that they realized that there were organisms out there that had already solved the problems that they had spent their careers trying to solve.
這改變了一切。在那之後, 這些工程師都捨不得回到船上。 行程第一天他們會走一小段路, 喀嚓、喀嚓、喀嚓,拍個五分鐘後就回到船上。 「好了,這個島看過了。」 但在這之後, 他們到處爬來爬去。 他們一直浮潛,潛到最後一刻非走不可才起來。 因為他們體會到自然界中 已經有生物體 解決了他們一輩子努力想解決的難題。
Learning about the natural world is one thing; learning from the natural world -- that's the switch. That's the profound switch. What they realized was that the answers to their questions are everywhere; they just needed to change the lenses with which they saw the world. 3.8 billion years of field-testing. 10 to 30 -- Craig Venter will probably tell you; I think there's a lot more than 30 million -- well-adapted solutions. The important thing for me is that these are solutions solved in context. And the context is the Earth -- the same context that we're trying to solve our problems in. So it's the conscious emulation of life's genius. It's not slavishly mimicking -- although Al is trying to get the hairdo going -- it's not a slavish mimicry; it's taking the design principles, the genius of the natural world, and learning something from it.
認識自然界是一回事, 向自然界學習,這才是轉變的開始。 這是一個深負意涵的轉變。 他們了解到,問題的答案俯仰皆是; 只需要改變觀察這個世界的觀點。 38 億年的實地測驗。 克萊格•凡特可能會跟你說有 1-3 億, 我則認為自然界裡有遠遠超過三億種適應良好的解決方案。 對我來說重點在於,這些解決方案考慮了整體環境 這個整體環境就是地球。 我們要解決的問題,也存在同樣的整體環境裡。 我們要有意識地向自然界的天才學習, 而不是全盤照抄。 雖然說愛因斯坦的髮型是想要模仿... 不是全盤照抄,而是找出設計原則, 找出自然界的天才,從中學習。
Now, in a group with so many IT people, I do have to mention what I'm not going to talk about, and that is that your field is one that has learned an enormous amount from living things, on the software side. So there's computers that protect themselves, like an immune system, and we're learning from gene regulation and biological development. And we're learning from neural nets, genetic algorithms, evolutionary computing. That's on the software side. But what's interesting to me is that we haven't looked at this, as much. I mean, these machines are really not very high tech in my estimation in the sense that there's dozens and dozens of carcinogens in the water in Silicon Valley. So the hardware is not at all up to snuff in terms of what life would call a success. So what can we learn about making -- not just computers, but everything? The plane you came in, cars, the seats that you're sitting on. How do we redesign the world that we make, the human-made world? More importantly, what should we ask in the next 10 years? And there's a lot of cool technologies out there that life has.
在場有許多資訊界的人士,我必須提一下 演講正文不會提到的,也就是 資訊界向生物界借鏡,在軟體方面已經學到很多。 所以有能自我保護的電腦,就像免疫系統一樣。 其他效法的對象還有基因調控、 生物發展、神經網路、 基因演算法、演化計算。 這是軟體層面。但我覺得有趣的是 我們還沒有開始考慮這個(硬體部份),這些機器 在我看來不算高科技 因為矽谷的水裡 有好幾十種致癌物。 因此硬體部份 以生命的觀點來看根本稱不上成功的設計。 在製造方面,我們可以學到什麼?不只針對電腦,我指所有東西的製造。 大家搭的飛機、汽車、坐的椅子。 我們如何重新設計我們所製造的世界,這個人造世界? 更重要的是,未來十年,我們的目標應該是什麼? 自然界的生命有數不清的有趣科技。
What's the syllabus? Three questions, for me, are key. How does life make things? This is the opposite; this is how we make things. It's called heat, beat and treat -- that's what material scientists call it. And it's carving things down from the top, with 96 percent waste left over and only 4 percent product. You heat it up; you beat it with high pressures; you use chemicals. OK. Heat, beat and treat.
我們的課程大綱該是什麼? 對我來說,有三個問題是關鍵。 生命如何製造東西? 我們製造東西的方法與自然恰是兩個極端。 我們的方法是加熱、加壓、化學處理, 這是材料科學家的說法。 這個方法從開始到結束,產生了 96% 的廢物 只有 4% 是成品。加熱,施加高壓, 再用化學藥物處理。加熱、加壓、化學處理。
Life can't afford to do that. How does life make things? How does life make the most of things? That's a geranium pollen. And its shape is what gives it the function of being able to tumble through air so easily. Look at that shape. Life adds information to matter. In other words: structure. It gives it information. By adding information to matter, it gives it a function that's different than without that structure. And thirdly, how does life make things disappear into systems? Because life doesn't really deal in things; there are no things in the natural world divorced from their systems. Really quick syllabus. As I'm reading more and more now, and following the story, there are some amazing things coming up in the biological sciences. And at the same time, I'm listening to a lot of businesses and finding what their sort of grand challenges are. The two groups are not talking to each other. At all.
生命沒辦法這麼浪費。那生命如何製造東西? 生命製造東西都是怎麼做的? 這是天竺葵花粉。 它的形狀讓它能輕易地在空中漂浮。 看看它的形狀。 生命在物質上加入資訊。 換言之就是結構。 結構包含資訊。物質加上資訊, 就有了功能,如果沒有結構就會有不同的功能。 第三,生命如何讓東西消失到系統裡? 因為生命處理的並不是東西 自然界中沒有什麼東西 是與系統脫節的。 一個很簡短的課程大綱。 當我順著這個題材,閱讀愈來愈多相關資料的同時, 生物科學界有了一些驚奇的發現。 在此同時,我傾聽許多企業的聲音 了解他們面臨什麼樣的大挑戰。 這兩個團體缺乏對話。 完全沒有。
What in the world of biology might be helpful at this juncture, to get us through this sort of evolutionary knothole that we're in? I'm going to try to go through 12, really quickly.
此時此刻,生物學的世界也許能幫上忙 幫助我們在這演化的節骨眼渡過難關。 下面我會很快地帶過 12 個重點。
One that's exciting to me is self-assembly. Now, you've heard about this in terms of nanotechnology. Back to that shell: the shell is a self-assembling material. On the lower left there is a picture of mother of pearl forming out of seawater. It's a layered structure that's mineral and then polymer, and it makes it very, very tough. It's twice as tough as our high-tech ceramics. But what's really interesting: unlike our ceramics that are in kilns, it happens in seawater. It happens near, in and near, the organism's body. This is Sandia National Labs. A guy named Jeff Brinker has found a way to have a self-assembling coding process. Imagine being able to make ceramics at room temperature by simply dipping something into a liquid, lifting it out of the liquid, and having evaporation force the molecules in the liquid together, so that they jigsaw together in the same way as this crystallization works. Imagine making all of our hard materials that way. Imagine spraying the precursors to a PV cell, to a solar cell, onto a roof, and having it self-assemble into a layered structure that harvests light.
好,我很有興趣的是自我組裝。 大家在奈米科技的領域裡面聽過這個名詞。 回到貝殼:貝殼本身就是一個自我組裝的材料。 左下方是珠母貝的照片。 它在海水中成形,是一個礦物質 和聚合物相間的層狀結構,所以非常非常堅硬。 硬度是高科技陶瓷的兩倍。 但是有趣的是:我們的陶瓷要在高溫窯爐中燒製, 貝殼卻是在海水中產生,在非常靠近生物體的地方產生。 現在大家開始嘗試... Sandia 國家實驗室中有一位 Jeff Brinker, 他找到一個方法,做出自我組裝的編碼程序。 想像一下,在室溫下就能製造陶瓷, 只要把某個東西浸入一種液體中, 再從液體中移出,晾乾, 強迫液體中的分子緊密排列, 像拼圖一樣結合在一起, 就跟結晶生成的方式一樣。 想像有一天,所有堅硬材質都能這樣製造 或是噴灑前驅物到太陽能板上, 放到屋頂上面,讓它自我組裝成可以轉換光能的層狀結構。
Here's an interesting one for the IT world: bio-silicon. This is a diatom, which is made of silicates. And so silicon, which we make right now -- it's part of our carcinogenic problem in the manufacture of our chips -- this is a bio-mineralization process that's now being mimicked. This is at UC Santa Barbara. Look at these diatoms. This is from Ernst Haeckel's work. Imagine being able to -- and, again, it's a templated process, and it solidifies out of a liquid process -- imagine being able to have that sort of structure coming out at room temperature. Imagine being able to make perfect lenses. On the left, this is a brittle star; it's covered with lenses that the people at Lucent Technologies have found have no distortion whatsoever. It's one of the most distortion-free lenses we know of. And there's many of them, all over its entire body. What's interesting, again, is that it self-assembles. A woman named Joanna Aizenberg, at Lucent, is now learning to do this in a low-temperature process to create these sort of lenses. She's also looking at fiber optics. That's a sea sponge that has a fiber optic. Down at the very base of it, there's fiber optics that work better than ours, actually, to move light, but you can tie them in a knot; they're incredibly flexible.
下面這個是資訊界會有興趣的: 生物矽。這是矽藻,它是由矽酸鹽所組成的。 我們現在製造矽元素... 也就是製造晶片時,會產生致癌物的問題。 現在有人開始嘗試模仿這個生物礦化的過程。 這是加州大學聖塔芭芭拉分校。看看這些矽藻。 這是 Ernst Haeckel 的研究。 想像我們能夠... 同樣的,這個過程也需要一塊模板起頭, 再從液體中固化產生。想像有一天 我們能在常溫下製造出這種結構。 想像有一天我們能製造完美的鏡片。 左邊是一隻陽燧足,它全身都是鏡片。 朗訊科技的研究人員發現, 這些鏡片完全沒有成像變形的問題。 這是據我們所知最沒有成像變形的一種鏡片。 陽隧足全身佈滿了這些鏡片。 有趣的是,這也是自我組裝的產物。 朗訊科技有一位叫做 Joanna Aizenberg 的女研究員, 她正在學習如何以低溫製程 做出這種鏡片。她同樣也研究光纖。 這是一種海綿, 它身體最底部有光纖,這些就是光纖。 這種光纖傳播光線的效果比人造光纖還要好。 而且還可以打結;這種光纖彈性好得不得了。
Here's another big idea: CO2 as a feedstock. A guy named Geoff Coates, at Cornell, said to himself, you know, plants do not see CO2 as the biggest poison of our time. We see it that way. Plants are busy making long chains of starches and glucose, right, out of CO2. He's found a way -- he's found a catalyst -- and he's found a way to take CO2 and make it into polycarbonates. Biodegradable plastics out of CO2 -- how plant-like.
這是另外一個重要的概念:拿二氧化碳當原料。 康乃爾大學有一位 Geoff Coates,他心想, 你知道嗎,植物不像我們,把二氧化碳當成這世代最嚴重的毒害。 那是我們的看法,植物則忙著用二氧化碳 合成出長鍊的澱粉和葡萄糖。 他發現了一種催化劑,也找到方法能將二氧化碳 變成聚碳酸酯。用二氧化碳 做出生物分解性塑膠 — 多像植物呀。
Solar transformations: the most exciting one. There are people who are mimicking the energy-harvesting device inside of purple bacterium, the people at ASU. Even more interesting, lately, in the last couple of weeks, people have seen that there's an enzyme called hydrogenase that's able to evolve hydrogen from proton and electrons, and is able to take hydrogen up -- basically what's happening in a fuel cell, in the anode of a fuel cell and in a reversible fuel cell. In our fuel cells, we do it with platinum; life does it with a very, very common iron. And a team has now just been able to mimic that hydrogen-juggling hydrogenase. That's very exciting for fuel cells -- to be able to do that without platinum.
太陽能轉換:這是最令人期待的一個。 現在有些人在模仿紫細菌體內的 能源採集裝置,這些人來自亞力桑那州立大學。更有趣的是, 不久以前,有人發現 一種叫做氫化酵素的東西,它能夠 利用質子跟電子來產生氫氣,也能夠分解氫氣。 基本上這就是燃料電池內部的反應:在燃料電池的陽極 以及在可逆式(再生型)燃料電池的反應。 人造燃料電池用的是白金。 但是生物用的是非常常見的鐵。 有個團隊最近才剛模擬出 這種能操弄氫氣的氫化酵素。 這是非常令人振奮的, 可以做出不需要白金的燃料電池。
Power of shape: here's a whale. We've seen that the fins of this whale have tubercles on them. And those little bumps actually increase efficiency in, for instance, the edge of an airplane -- increase efficiency by about 32 percent. Which is an amazing fossil fuel savings, if we were to just put that on the edge of a wing. Color without pigments: this peacock is creating color with shape. Light comes through, it bounces back off the layers; it's called thin-film interference. Imagine being able to self-assemble products with the last few layers playing with light to create color. Imagine being able to create a shape on the outside of a surface, so that it's self-cleaning with just water. That's what a leaf does. See that up-close picture? That's a ball of water, and those are dirt particles. And that's an up-close picture of a lotus leaf. There's a company making a product called Lotusan, which mimics -- when the building facade paint dries, it mimics the bumps in a self-cleaning leaf, and rainwater cleans the building.
形狀的威力:這是一隻鯨魚。我們看到這隻鯨魚的鰭上 有許多圓形瘤狀突起。這些小突起 其實能提高效率,例如說, 設置在機翼的邊緣,效率能提高 32%。 只要在機翼上加上這種突起 就能節省大量的石化燃料。 不用顏料就能呈現顏色:這隻孔雀羽毛的顏色來自形狀。 光線透進來,被好幾層反彈回去。 這叫做薄膜干涉。想像有一天可以做出 自我組裝的產品,產品最外面的幾層 操作光線來產生顏色。 想像能夠在物體表面上加上結構, 讓它只要有水就能自我清潔,跟葉子一樣。 看到這張特寫照片了嗎? 這是一個水滴,這些是灰塵顆粒。 這是一張蓮葉的特寫照片。 有一家公司生產一種叫做 Lotusan 的產品,它模仿了... 當建築物外牆的粉刷乾了以後,會有像葉子上能夠 自我清潔的突起,然後雨水就能夠將建築物洗淨。
Water is going to be our big, grand challenge: quenching thirst. Here are two organisms that pull water. The one on the left is the Namibian beetle pulling water out of fog. The one on the right is a pill bug -- pulls water out of air, does not drink fresh water. Pulling water out of Monterey fog and out of the sweaty air in Atlanta, before it gets into a building, are key technologies.
水將會是我們最重大,嚴峻的挑戰: 如何解(全球的)渴。 這裡有兩種生物能夠蒐集水。 左邊是那米比亞金龜,牠能從霧中蒐集水分。 右邊的是球潮蟲,能從空氣中蒐集水, 不用喝淡水。 在水氣進入建築物之前,從蒙特瑞的霧中, 和亞特蘭大的潮濕空氣中把水份分離出來,是很重要的科技。
Separation technologies are going to be extremely important. What if we were to say, no more hard rock mining? What if we were to separate out metals from waste streams, small amounts of metals in water? That's what microbes do; they chelate metals out of water. There's a company here in San Francisco called MR3 that is embedding mimics of the microbes' molecules on filters to mine waste streams. Green chemistry is chemistry in water. We do chemistry in organic solvents. This is a picture of the spinnerets coming out of a spider and the silk being formed from a spider. Isn't that beautiful? Green chemistry is replacing our industrial chemistry with nature's recipe book. It's not easy, because life uses only a subset of the elements in the periodic table. And we use all of them, even the toxic ones. To figure out the elegant recipes that would take the small subset of the periodic table, and create miracle materials like that cell, is the task of green chemistry.
分離科技將會變得非常重要。 如果有一天,我們不必再挖掘採礦? 如果我們可以從廢水分離出微量金屬? 微生物已經能做到了。 它們將金屬從水中螯合出來。 舊金山有一家公司叫做 MR3, 他們在過濾器上嵌入模仿自微生物的分子 去採集廢水中的礦物。 綠色化學是在水中進行的。 而我們的化學反應卻是在有機溶劑中進行的。 這張照片是蜘蛛的紡絲器。 絲從蜘蛛體內產生。很漂亮吧? 環保化學是用自然的處方來取代我們的工業化學 這不容易,因為生命只使用 元素週期表上一小部份的元素。 而我們則是全部都用,有毒的也用。 這些高級配方只需用到週期表的一小部份, 就能製造出像那個細胞一樣神奇的材料。 搞懂這些配方,就是環保化學的任務。
Timed degradation: packaging that is good until you don't want it to be good anymore, and dissolves on cue. That's a mussel you can find in the waters out here, and the threads holding it to a rock are timed; at exactly two years, they begin to dissolve.
定時分解:一種包裝材料,在你需要時很好用, 不需要了,時候到了,又能馬上分解。 這是你在這一帶水域裡會看到的淡菜。 這些將它們固定在石頭上的足絲線是有時效的,不多不少正好兩年, 時間到了就開始分解。
Healing: this is a good one. That little guy over there is a tardigrade. There is a problem with vaccines around the world not getting to patients. And the reason is that the refrigeration somehow gets broken; what's called the "cold chain" gets broken. A guy named Bruce Rosner looked at the tardigrade -- which dries out completely, and yet stays alive for months and months and months, and is able to regenerate itself. And he found a way to dry out vaccines -- encase them in the same sort of sugar capsules as the tardigrade has within its cells -- meaning that vaccines no longer need to be refrigerated. They can be put in a glove compartment, OK. Learning from organisms. This is a session about water -- learning about organisms that can do without water, in order to create a vaccine that lasts and lasts and lasts without refrigeration.
治療:這個很有趣。 那邊那個小傢伙屬於緩步動物門(水熊蟲) 有一個問題讓世界上的疫苗 無法送到病人手中。原因是 沒辦法保持持續冷藏的狀態, 所謂「低溫鍊」中斷。 一個叫做 Bruce Rosner 的人研究了水熊蟲。 水熊蟲能夠在完全脫水的狀態下,存活好幾個月, 之後又能夠重新復甦。 因此他發現了乾燥疫苗的方法: 將疫苗包在一種糖製膠囊裡, 就像水熊蟲細胞內的膠囊構造。 也就是說,疫苗不再需要冷藏, 放在汽車前座的置物箱也沒問題。 向生物學習。這一小節跟水有關, 向沒有水也能生存的生物學習, 好創造出不需冷藏,可以長時間儲存的疫苗。
I'm not going to get to 12. But what I am going to do is tell you that the most important thing, besides all of these adaptations, is the fact that these organisms have figured out a way to do the amazing things they do while taking care of the place that's going to take care of their offspring. When they're involved in foreplay, they're thinking about something very, very important -- and that's having their genetic material remain, 10,000 generations from now. And that means finding a way to do what they do without destroying the place that'll take care of their offspring. That's the biggest design challenge. Luckily, there are millions and millions of geniuses willing to gift us with their best ideas. Good luck having a conversation with them.
我沒辦法講完 12 點, 但是我要告訴大家,除了這些演化適應, 最重要的是,這些生物 都想出了辦法,一方面做到這些神奇的事情, 同時又能善待環境, 讓環境能善待牠們的子孫。 當牠們進行前戲的時候, 心裡想的是非常重要的事情, 也就是把牠們的遺傳物質 萬世流傳下去。 這也就意味著,找到一種做事的方法, 不會破壞牠們下一代賴以為生的環境。 這才是最大的設計難題。 幸運的是,有上百萬的天才 願意提供牠們偉大的想法。 祝各位跟牠們聊得愉快。
Thank you.
謝謝大家。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
Chris Anderson: Talk about foreplay, I -- we need to get to 12, but really quickly.
講到前戲,我們得講完 12 點,但是請儘快。
Janine Benyus: Oh really? CA: Yeah. Just like, you know, like the 10-second version of 10, 11 and 12. Because we just -- your slides are so gorgeous, and the ideas are so big, I can't stand to let you go down without seeing 10, 11 and 12.
真的嗎? 對,像是 10, 11, 12 點的十秒鐘精簡版。 因為我們實在...你的投影片實在是太精彩了, 這些想法是這麼的雄大,沒看到 10, 11, 12 點 我不能讓你下台。
JB: OK, put this -- OK, I'll just hold this thing. OK, great. OK, so that's the healing one. Sensing and responding: feedback is a huge thing. This is a locust. There can be 80 million of them in a square kilometer, and yet they don't collide with one another. And yet we have 3.6 million car collisions a year. (Laughter) Right. There's a person at Newcastle who has figured out that it's a very large neuron. And she's actually figuring out how to make a collision-avoidance circuitry based on this very large neuron in the locust.
好,戴上 — 好,我拿著就好。好,太棒了。 好,剛剛講到醫療。 感知與反應:回饋是很重要的。 這是蝗蟲。一平方公里內可以有八千萬隻蝗蟲, 但是牠們不會撞到彼此。 反觀我們一年有三百六十萬起車禍。 (笑聲) 新堡有個人 她發現這跟一個巨大的神經元有關。 她正在研究如何做出 一種防撞電路 設計原理就是根據蝗蟲體內的巨大神經元。
This is a huge and important one, number 11. And that's the growing fertility. That means, you know, net fertility farming. We should be growing fertility. And, oh yes -- we get food, too. Because we have to grow the capacity of this planet to create more and more opportunities for life. And really, that's what other organisms do as well. In ensemble, that's what whole ecosystems do: they create more and more opportunities for life. Our farming has done the opposite. So, farming based on how a prairie builds soil, ranching based on how a native ungulate herd actually increases the health of the range, even wastewater treatment based on how a marsh not only cleans the water, but creates incredibly sparkling productivity.
第 11 點影響深遠,非常重要。 也就是讓環境更加豐饒。 這意味著,能增加土地富饒的農業。 我們應該增加土地的富饒,當然我們同時也會得到食物。 因為我們必須增加這個星球的負載能力, 才能為生命製造愈來愈多的機會。 這其實也是其他生物在做的事。 整體而言,這也是整個生態系在做的事: 為生命製造愈來愈多的機會。 但是我們的農業卻是逆道而行。 因此,農業要仿效大草原如何滋養土壤 畜牧業要仿效原生有蹄類動物 如何促進棲地的健康。 甚至廢水處理也可以仿效 沼澤不只能淨水 同時也創造數不清令人目眩的生命力。
This is the simple design brief. I mean, it looks simple because the system, over 3.8 billion years, has worked this out. That is, those organisms that have not been able to figure out how to enhance or sweeten their places, are not around to tell us about it. That's the twelfth one. Life -- and this is the secret trick; this is the magic trick -- life creates conditions conducive to life. It builds soil; it cleans air; it cleans water; it mixes the cocktail of gases that you and I need to live. And it does that in the middle of having great foreplay and meeting their needs. So it's not mutually exclusive. We have to find a way to meet our needs, while making of this place an Eden.
這是一個簡單的設計簡報。我是說,它看起來簡單 因為整個生態系,過去 38 億年來,已經找出答案。 那些沒找出方法, 無法改善環境、優化環境的生物 都活不到今天來講故事。 這就是第 12 點。 生命… 這是一種神秘又神奇的把戲: 生命創造對生命有益的環境。 生命產生土壤,清新空氣,純淨水源; 生命混合出你我賴以為生的空氣組成。 在此同時,生命也一邊享受美好前戲, 滿足了自己的需求。兩者不是互斥的。 我們必須找到方法,既能夠滿足我們的需求, 又能把我們的環境打造成伊甸園。
CA: Janine, thank you so much. (Applause)
Janine,非常謝謝你。 (掌聲)