sparks to live safe passage, both for age and for people to leave guys. all right, you are up to date. there's plenty more news and information on our website, the w dot com and you can follow us on our social media. cancer handle is dw news on pablo phone areas for me and the team here in britain, x, roger, take care of the purchases, tilio tied to shape, to west the south africa. adapt to make a nice, we've created together, they explore the contradictory nature of these euro centric as a team. and how these beliefs can be changed? stop filming offices, it starts october 21st. unplugged w in

the science of the theory. small. some ingenious inventors are inspiring materials width of wonders, properties sensitive to climate change. they can act as a sentinel for our interaction with the plan. brilliant color, without pain, where you see what we see here is a close eskoville. we see that the blue comes from the background is good, only see protection from hazardous chemicals and bacteria. the word contaminated on the glove will turn from blue to red. when you touch a surface that is contaminated, even in the on single metal, as our ocean level continue to go up in the future, a lot of cd will have to be fueled on top of the ocean. all things to the millions of years of evolution, packed into the remarkable world of butterflies, n mom. many problems that humans have themselves,

the butterflies and mos already have the best discover how butterflies could help us make our world better. the their dazzling colors and patterns are among the most amazing and the animal kingdom. some estimates put to numbers, species around a $160000.00, and they drive in nearly every nook and cranny of our planet. the variety and beauty are testimony to the power of evolution. as though there are countless hidden features, some visible only with the most powerful micros. today, scientists around the world are studying these natural treasures. discovering secrets that can be adapted and applied to make our world more sustainable are so beautiful that we can learn

a lot by studying them. as champions of evolution, they've been added for tens of millions of butterflies and merge around the same time miss flowering plants. throughout their long history, they have diversified and developed amazing adaptations like powerful toys and silk thread. stationary flight transparent material temperature regulation astonishing colors and patterns and defenses against bacterial infection. they have so much to teach us. but today, many species are in danger of extinction. threatened by a warming world. the butterflies are giving scientist a window into our changing climate. but that's only the beginning of what studies

of these remarkable creatures, everything particularly about the structure of the materials at the nano scopic scale. researchers have been inspired by incredible nana scopic structures in the wings and bodies of butterflies. enabling the creation of innovative technologies that may 1 day save lives and even health combat climate change. butterflies and must have many aspects of the morphology of their physiology that we could use for bio inspire design for sure. i mean there's many things, many problems that humans having solved the butterflies and mos already have me. the use of butterfly and most features dates back at base 5000 years when a space she is known as bob next morning, was 1st domesticated in china for its ability to produce

a phenomenally resilient and versatile material. so the, because of the importance of self to the chinese imperial court, the means of producing it was a heavily guarded secret. and its violators were punished even by desk. the today of course, the secret is out. the whole process starts with the hatching of a minuscule age and the birth of a caterpillar that measures less than an 8th of an inch. from its earliest days, the bomb bix caterpillar devours an enormous quantity of mulberry leaves. plant matter that it will eventually convert into cell thread the

after about a month of feeding the bomb backs caterpillar will find a branch to climb, where it will begin metamorphosis into its adult form. for the next few days, it will tirelessly repeat the same figure, 8 movement wells, to creating a viscous filament, the silk eventually spinning up to a mile of the thread into a protective cuckoo. the scientists have found that the thread is mainly comprised of just 2 proteins. the today,

a whole new chapter is opening in the story of silk researchers at the tests. so collab in boston has isolated one of the proteins called fiber away and have created an innovative material. so we end up with a solution that is the suspension of the fibroid molecules in water. once we have the solution, this is our magical starting material to do to do many, many things. to the scientists. silk is an incredibly versatile, environmentally friendly material. what begins as a colorless liquid, this gel like solution can be either flexible insoluble or as tough as kev. lar luciano de mony is exploring medical applications 5 row and has an advantage over synthetic materials like plastics because it's compatible with the human body. oh, so this is a very energetic next. those are very nice. yeah,

but as soon as i stress them they are are breaking down. this is going to be nice for like a band aid type application or reconfigurable. some of these are very, very, pretty good. and yeah, we'll get your makes the job together with the solution and then control the release of that drug in on a higher surface area. and distressing then of the attributes the functional as a result. so it has a big given value to some of the applications was so, because of the fact that cell can be implanted without an inflammatory response and the human body that it can, it can be eaten, it can be consumed in the lab. they're finding that the fiber o in material can be made to be rigid and tough, or flexible like a film, making it an ideal material as an implant in reconstructive surgery. if you take this material and you know, then you can mechanically shape it with the tools that you come a use in

a mechanic shop. and what you can do is you can generate small screws, the screws made of fiber when they're similar to the metal screws currently used to reconstruct bones. they can also deliver human growth factor compounds to help bones knit together. so this, these are the worlds that come together in the mechanical properties and the medical properties and a material that integrates with, with living tissue in liquid form the fiber when in silver, is also being combined with chemicals that react in the presence of bacteriological, viral threats the result is an inc, that can change color when exposed to dangerous substances in the environment. all of the things that are here on the tapestry, it react react to the environment, react to the environment around it. and so when you, when there is a change in the environment around it, they will change color accordingly. this

fabric is of particular interest for making protective gear for workers operating where they might be exposed to dangerous substances. so these types of things are very interesting to turn objects into, into sensing objects that you print a word with these inks onto the surface of personal protection equipment. so i'd like and love to hear that more and will, will sense the environment around it. in this case, the word contaminated on the glove will turn from blue to red. when you touch a surface that is contaminated, the, the caterpillar that produces snow is only one stage and the butterflies unique life cycle, n o, it moves through 4 distinct phases. egg, caterpillar,

crystal is, are, and adults. the butterfly extracts itself from its crystal is dazed and fragile, unfolding its wings and its body with a claw like rustling. when it emerges from its chrysalis, the adult has been completely transformed into one of the most delicate and graceful creatures in nature. and of course, the vivid an iridescent colors and patterns of butterfly wings are the most striking feature. nowhere seen more brilliantly than in the mail of the more from the species of the tropical rain forest. in flight its wings seemed to give off blue flashes that are hard to miss, even in the densest forest surge. berty,

a research physicist at the paris institute of nano sciences, talks about the wings. unique properties such as best each state sees, presents a slightly different blue and has a slightly different wing beats on yes. and then variations of colors that we see here. a phenomenon of iridescence, where the color varies in slide to the hip on the cell. it's part of the code of communication between males and females, just from that. it's an impressive ad application to the problem of finding a mate in the forest, but it comes with a problem. what are so visible to the female butterfly is also noticeable to hungry birds. reminder, yes. so you keep the male has to find a way to power use, is it that is being very visible? while now getting caught aside the 1st predator that comes along the in the, the genius of this butterfly. like any of those just but to you is that it does not

apply. seems right. you've ordered by the law as it flips through the forest, blinking blue. it follows an unpredictable exact path, making it hard to track a decline. so you have the dotted line to zig zagging like that, which makes it almost impossible for a bird to calculate its trajectory and snapped it up and flying foot the it's the more photos, irridescent blue, the intrigue, steroids, and the other researches the most. they want to understand how nature produces a color that looks so unnatural. school what you see, what we see here is a close up in this way. do we see that the blue that comes from the background scams you know these. okay. and there are scales here, the clock, the joint, some top of the notes. these are covering scales and for the transparency you can see through them. the more full use is a very peculiar way to generate color. it is

a structural color which is intrinsically different from a pigment color. this is in contrast to regular pigment pigment, or like manuals of pigment that are inside of the cells that give something a yellow or red or, or green color. the big me color results from the partial reflection of daylight when a pigment reflects a red color, for instance, it means it has absorbed all the other colors. but then this other type of color ration is actually not caused by pigment. the structures that produce the color of the more foe are visible under the microscope. the wing show a regular pattern of res surfaces. each one just 110000000 of a meter in size. it's the size of these structures that produce the wings, iridescence. it's caused by little bumps or, or, um, glass of these they call them are little out deviations in the smoothness of the insect skin. and when light bounces off of that, our eyes perceive it as being

a metallic or shiny or iridescent color. the blue of the morpho swing is not due to pigmentation, but it's generated by the structure of the wing itself. when light strikes the wing at certain angles, it's nano scale features select only the blue frequencies, which are reflected resulting in an iridescent metallic appearance. the surprising new insight into structural color has inspired researchers to control light and produce color without chemicals or paint in all sorts of other materials. the at the institute of optics at the university of rochester in the united states. so i'm like, o has succeeded in creating such structures inspired by this murphy, the bottom fi. so we actually can also imprint some of this tiny mike code metal

structures onto a material surface and gave them a very unique properties using an in for red laser with very short bursts of light, they are able to scope. dana sized structures measured in billions, 7 meter into metals. this incredible met instead of creating various colors on surfaces, is not only allowed the researches to reproduce the color of the butterfly's wings . it also enables them to create a highly light absorbing material that could be called absolute black extra. so that can be absorbed a certain range of car reflects all the colors filled. i gave you a certain color appearance. so we create this technology is called the black metal, actually will in distinguish the absorbed old colors of the,

of the spectrum. therefore it is pure peach block. these discoveries have the potential to revolutionize solar power. sean lace team found that applying these nano structures to a solar panel improved its efficiency by a 130 percent. the nano structures allow the panel to absorb almost the entire light spectra and minimizing loss of energy due to reflection. butterflies use a variety of defense mechanisms, ovo some boldly where of assigns of toxicity. others prefer to pass unseen. they melt into the surrounding colors of their natural environment. for example, the gretta odo, also known as a glass wing butterfly, relies on a double defense displaying some warning colors. while most of the wing is almost totally transparent,

a most unusual adaptation. the wing surfaces have scarcely any reflectivity, even glass and other human made materials reflect some light but not this butterfly wings, which makes it extremely interesting to scientists. researchers at the karlsruhe institute of technology in germany are studying the unusual properties of transparent type wing, like the grid. oh those. and that's what you see on top of these nano structures here. nano, nano pillars which have random hines. and also the distance between the nano pillows is a little bit random and, and so they're not regularly arranged to an end is random is important for the anti reflective properties of the bottom slide. this is where the secret of the high transparency lies,

the random distribution and size of these conical met. a metric pillars create an anti reflective layer, allowing light raise even the most grazing to pass through the wing without being dispersed or reflected. until this anti reflective properties interesting be for different types of application by sympathetic like smartphone insurance on the new phone know in the summer when the sun is shining, it's hard to read and it would be nice to have an anti reflective screen and also for solar cells, it will be interesting to have less reflection and have more collection of the solar images. these researchers create a plastics film on which they print nano structures, an invitation of those in the crystal and type wing. their goal is to create anti reflective materials that are highly transparent.

the nano structures of the wings offer other properties, such as the ability to repel water known as hydro pro bescedy, the staying dry as a matter of life and death for butterflies. missed in rain would quickly ground them if they weren't water proof that the only professor a butterfly might not get wessy seized the wings with waves and they touched each other, said they would stick together well to the end. the butterfly with dr. deal with doing so a butterfly wing is super hydrophobic. so the deal that is the wing doesn't get what the water forms be, it's a t and then the beads roll off cleaning the weighting of all of the dust and dirt on it. it picks up the longer wage,

which comes up thanks to its nana metric structures, the more photos wing doesn't just rid itself of water drops. it breaks them down into a multitude of smaller drops that flow more easily off the surface. or the end is rochester, lab drum like glow is exploring possible engineering applications for this extremely high just phobic material. in one of his experiments, he starts by laser edging a metallic surface with a nano scale pattern inspired by the martha wing. he's hoping to create the same water repelling effect. the when he drops water on the surface he has created it is totally repelled. the experiment is this excess water drops are not only repelled,

they've bounced back. with this material. gen ladies team seems to have created an unsinkable metal. and what we did was we actually utilize in, uh, build up metallic assembly width a super hydrophobic surface. so that the hydrophobic surface they are facing each other. and if you pull this a metallic, something inside the water, and because the inside of the assembly is super hydrophobic, so they will push the water out and will prevent the water squeeze into the metallic assembly and the air trap inside. we'll keep the metallic a, somebody else flo, fabricating a ship's whole. using this design would have an obvious benefit, but cham late believes it could also help us adapt to climate change. and as our ocean level continue to go up in the future,

a lot of see if you will have to be fueled on top of the ocean. and if we can deploy this a simple model for construct help the floating cd and the cd will never see the who could have imagined that one day a ship or even a whole city might rest on a butterflies wing. the not all butterfly wings are visually arrested. the nano structures in wings are not only involved in color, transparency or tricking predators. some of them serve to provide direct metabolic benefits for survival. the

like insects, butterflies and months are cold blooded. no butterfly can take off without a minimum of sudden light heated, spotty, dark winged butterflies absorb the heat of his son more readily and seemed to have an advantage over those with lighter colored wings. it might seem that a white wing butterfly, like a cabbage white butterfly, would be operating at a huge disadvantage. and yet in the early morning, even on cloudy days, it is one of the 1st arrivals to gather nectar and flower fields. how does it manage it? the at the paris institute of nano sciences, serge berty, a is interested in this phenomenon. don't get that. so the why satisfies,

cannot directly absorb a light through the wing. most of it you have to because they're wide and clean and reflect on the end. i don't know is that what they do when they need to warm up could is use the wings is concentrated before taking off. the ice is a place themselves facing the sun, then open and close the wings like the c. as it's very reflective, it sends a lot of hide and concentrates the light on. it's back to the 4 eggs where the wings, abductive muscles are located. he does it. so when the wings concentrate, the light before x will absorb all this. and this is the reflective white coloration acts as a mirror to concentrate heat onto the animal's body. in the tiniest details, there is virtually a can verify the way she is sent to the thorax on the printer. as with all scales, we see a network of stray sion escape,

but what's particular to the cabbage wide butterfly is that there's a network of confounded stray agents in this direction as though and small compartments informed inside. the cabbage. white scales contain tightly packed ovoid shaped granules like eggs in a card. they reflect the sun's rays, but not in all directions. they focus the light and eat like a magnifying glass. the butterfly then angles it swings in a way that sends the sheet down to its back. this is how the butterfly warms up in the just has to open and close its wings to regulate its temper, can feel it to. in fact, it's the master of its own temperature. finding new ways to concentrate some light is important for humans to in the search for cheap and efficient replacements for fossil fuels. in her lab at the university of exeter,

katie shanks is adapting the cabbage whites reflective. nana structures to solar panels working to increase their output while reducing their size. so by looking at the, the wings of the cabbage, i bought a fly. we can actually use the, we a very significant amount. so in a natural studies, we've been able to improve the power to weight ratio by 17 times, which is this maximum. and well, i'm specifically looking at using those very lightweight now structured wings to make our own very compact advanced to a panel built into any materials today by combining the properties of the glass wing and cabbage white wings. researches are hoping to develop a new generation of solar panels to the gasoline. but finally, the surface, the engine secretary and the category of 5 would be for the samples. and just this

one source sales. and overall, that means we get this kind of the increased power, right, could from also sales, but not using as much pv material or, and also make it a lot smaller and late. so, you know, of the ball flies, what sort of things nature have had to do this, you know, as, as the develop is evolved and it's treat themselves to suit their surroundings. i think we're now realizing you have to do the same terms of tweaking or, you know, energy demands and are you seasoned materials that we use to kind of nature. we're also sustainable in surviving. just as the boss lights are, each remarkable the butterfly wings can offer protection from predators and rain and also capture the sun's rays to warm up. but that's not the end of their impressive biology. their delicate antennae serve is highly sensitive, chemical, detecting noses. they have these little tips that are inside of,

along the length of the antennae. and those sensory pits are, it's quite capable of, of detecting kind of chemical compounds and basically faction or, or smelling the m 20 of the male bomb backs are those with the multitude of microscopic sensing, oregon's known as sense zillow, that vibrate and very high frequency. they can home in on the one kind of ceremony molecule, they are looking for among all the other ones in suspension in the atmosphere. in fact, some researchers believe that the silk months have some of the most highly develop sensitive smell. in the living world. males are task able to detect a female from over 6 miles away. an extraordinary fee, which scientists working on the detection of explosives or toxic gases would love

to harness the valerie keller and her team are part of a program for protecting civilian pop relations. sheila and you can see on the, on 10 that is the defense. so structure, this is kind of like tiny sticks sale, withdrew inspiration from them frequently. so just had to be wants to. in fact, we're trying to do by inspiration, by making a synthesis in the lab and 12 or that enables us to duplicate this architecture. you see nature just of to point of sale on enough to mechanically duplicating the anatomical genius of the bomb. biggs is not an easy task. valerie keller's team is creating a forest of sense zillah via a chemical reaction on a titanium base. the result is a forest like arrangement of titanium dioxide nanotubes. if a chemical molecule in the air attaches to the nanotubes, its weight changes the vibration frequency of the forest. slowing them down in

a way they can set off an alarm. g n t, saran gas and other toxic chemicals, all have their own weights, nanotubes, our program to react to those signal has to trigger alarms is at the french german research institute of st. louis, denny spitzer force he's a big future for these detectors. i think amazing is the detect uh we can come up with stationary detectors and then we can go on basing them on the butterfly. that is, if we can start to make the detectors fly. and the idea came to us to implant these detect is on the drone on cells that the military or civil security people can detect dangerous compound. it could be an award talks in this or siren gases or other extremely dangerous compounds. i'm wondering because when the person that feels the 1st symptoms of gas like that, it is already too late to dig up with the drone

surveillance of large urban areas could save major populations from terrace gas attack. the g. amazing evolutionary tricks of butterflies and moths are not limited to their wings or their antennae. unlike many insects, they don't have what might be recognized as a mouth. the most of the butterflies and moss that we, we think of have a sucking mouth part like a process that is kind of coiled up that kind of is like a straw and it, it kind of extends outwards with this cranial, sucking pump. and it sucks up next year from flowers. the

many butterflies made only for a few weeks, but one cold. hello, tony is stands out with a live scan closer to 6 mount the . this relatively long lived butterfly fascinates, adriana briscoe and larry gilbert. one of the ways we think they can live so long is because they have changed their diet a little long time because they have develop disability to harvest. oh well, most butterflies feed mainly on nectar hello. courteous as pollen to its diet. the pollen sticks to the entire length of its proboscis. the poland might keep the butterfly healthy, but adriana has found

a possible medical application derived from the way hel, aconia state, just the nutrients. she's collaborating with chemist rachel martin. this is a part of the process where fluids can go in and they can also go out. i was really fast, needed to find out that it acts like this funds. i was kind of always picturing this being like a giant drinking strong. oh yeah, no. you can see that there are these ridges shown in green, and those are perfect grooves for paul in to get stuck in when the butterflies pro the flour and pauline gray and start to get stuck in those rooms. the butterflies then release saliva from the tip of the process and that starts to blue things together. it makes sense that the butterfly would have enzymes that are really optimized for getting into those little looks in crannies and digesting the protein. because holland is about 20 percent protein. so it's a, it is

a lot the hell aconia as long life might be explained in part by this intake of high protein pollen which it actually digests on the outside of its per bosses. thanks to a very particular type of enzyme that unsigned is known as component use. because it was originally discovered in sub plots. supp boss have one version of this enzyme which they use to digest their circle coons, so they can escape. or if that as i am just not functioning the dying or couldn't me, by extracting this could come days and time to reproduce its dissolving properties on a large scale. adrianna hopes to alleviate potentially serious medical conditions like blood clots. but cards are very common in the united states. it turns out you can take a conus and in

a test to you can mix it up with the blood clot and it will break it down into its component parts like the silk protein fiber o in the kootenays protein is also compatible with human biology. and the longevity hel aconia as make lean from poland, shows how tightly the evolution of butterflies depends on the plans they feed on. plants and butterflies have mutual evolution from egg to chrysalis. many butterfly species are born, grow up, and metamorphose on individual plant species, with which they are associated. you sometimes have a species of a butterfly, your mouth, that is the only thing that can pollinate a particular a particular species of a flower. and so these really tight interactions mean that if we lose one of those

members of this partnership, then you often end up losing both species. fates of butterflies implants are forever like to such a degree that we can not hope to preserve butterflies without preserving their eco systems. today's climate change may have very unfortunate consequences. ringback news spring has come to mexico signalling to the monarchs, the time to return. but these butterflies who migrated south and the phone now have to fly back knowing the how would they know which way to fly the

christine. merlin keeps a small group of monarchs for study with me. that one is actually in a process of thinking that she wants to explore and understand which specific genes triggered the migration and guide them on their way. this one, just a okay. this one is getting ready. christine believes that changes in the environment trigger a response in the migratory genes of the monarchs. a process known as epigenetic as good as my students. so with each butterflies, a, she analyzes a range of genes to discover which are involved with the timing of the monarch's navigation, and which with the direction they follow. one of the best example of everything genetic changes that will cure in, in monarch migration is that of the re calibration of those 10 combust orientation

from sauce welding to full to know for us in, in the spring. and we do believe that if he genetic changes are responsible for this switch in flight, the orientation the migrating monarchs also use magnetic fields to guide their flight orientation to find genes that allow monarchs to sense the magnetic field. christine uses a faraday cage that blocks the outside electromagnetic influences. there. she generates her own magnetic field to test the reaction of the monarch's behavior. we use a, i'm not going to call you to has the response of the one on the butterfly to the reverse, all off the inclination. and when butterfly since and respond to this with the song, they stop swapping the wings where they strongly they have an active flight. and

once we revise the magnetic field back to normal, then you should be able responses, distinguishes itself, the, the evidence is in monarch search and medically program to align with the magnetic field. and we can see them flap their wings when they sense. when the seasons change, causing a change of temperature, a change of the angle of the sun, as well as a change in the daily sunshine duration. the butterflies genes trigger a signal to migrate the when in canada and the us, the onset of false signals departure. colder go. so when in mexico spring tells them go north given the extent that monarchs depend on temperature, it's not surprising that climate change worries researchers to monitor monarch

populations in part to understand the risks we owe things by studying monarchs biology very closely. it indirectly tells us our own, the impacts on their environment that they cover. so we want to watch what's happening to them. watch how they're being impacted. search that we know then how other species may potentially being impacted because they're being impacted by those same climate change. the well butterflies of mazda are really a big part of the whole ecosystem. so if we were to lose by a certain speed, these are groups of ccs. a butterfly as a must. we lose pollinators for sure. but we also lose important diet. for birds, we use important diet for other insects like drag and flies,

we lose important diet items even for people because there are people that like to eat these, these as food items. so it's a kind of a cascading effect. it's not just that you would lose this one insect, you would actually lose many members of the community to which it belongs. and that's, i think, the thing that we're, we're working against the butterflies in monce are inspiring scientists and engineers to create remarkable inventions from the nana scopic structures on their wings that create color and transparency. to their ability to repel water and fight infection. they offer lessons about what's possible at the very smallest scale, but they also presented us with a warning about what's at stake if we fail. as stewards of the endlessly incentive natural environment,

the the kick off the

truly into to still come into the topic every week in 90 minutes, dw, the imagine that you're eating a hamburger and as you're biting into this juicy burner, your dining companion says to you actually the hamburger is not made from cows, it's made from golden retrievers. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 in meeting cultures around the world,

people learn to classify small handful of animals with edible and all the rest of the classify as discussing the w series about our complex relationship with animals . the debate watch now on youtube, d. w documentary the this is dw use and these are our top stories. the sizes of palestinians have been gathering at the crossing between guys and egypt which has remained closed. israel's prime minister benyamin netanyahu ru dived, a temporary cease far to allow aid supplies in or foreigners. i, despite international efforts to open the roof of crossing, the un says guys is running out of water, food and fuel.