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Art to to impress the loved one
Here is an example of true art in Nature. We can argue day and night about what art is and what the definitions are but general understanding is that it is something more of aesthetic nature than practical. In general terms that is. Something to do with emotion, feeling and love being a king of them all. Or a queen! Anyway, there is a bird, which builds installations of no practical use, but only for the female to enjoy! It is not a nest, it is not a love-making pad – none of that. It is JUST a present: an equivalent of bouquet of flowers if you like. Amazing! And it gets better: there..
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Splendid Cocktails TRIZ Inventive Principles № 26 COPYING and № 33 HOMOGENEITY  Cocktails are much more delightful when they stay cold. You have used ice cubes for that so far. The problem is that ice comes back to water after a while which may affect the taste of the drink. Instead of using ugly plastic ice cubes think about deep-frozen fruit pieces (pineapple, melon…) or even… vegetables (cucumber, carrot…).  And if you don't want to change the taste of your drink – e.g. white or rosé wine – use fruits with a skin (grapes, cherries, berries…), they will not ..
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Science behind INVENTORIUM cards
Teaching innovative design and TRIZ (theory of invention) at the University of Bath for 15 years we helped students to improve their examination scores by 20% in average. INVENTORIUM card game is the result of long time development of teaching methods to support creativity and innovation in international and multi-cultural groups of students.  Vast amount of study proved the significant positive effect of TRIZ knowledge on general quality of thinking. The research that forms scientific background of INVENTORIUM cards was commissioned by European Space Agency to assist astronauts in ..
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La technologie ouvre de nouvelles capacités de voir l’invisible, d'entendre l'inaudible, mais qu’en est-il de la capacité à comprendre ce que nous ne pouvons même pas concevoir ? Par exemple, le langage animal, d'anciennes langues humaines nouvellement découvertes... des signaux extraterrestres?  Nous avons créé de telles technologies pour les missions vers Mars et... les fourmis nous ont aidés à relever ce défi. Voyager vers Mars est un projet ambitieux.  Il est important d’être prêt à appréhender les problèmes à venir. Le premier signe d’une tension se révèle dans la communication..
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Ants help astronauts in Mars mission.
Technology opens new capabilities to see invisible, to hear unheard, but what about the ability to understand what we cannot even comprehend? For example, animal language, newly discovered ancient human languages … alien signals?  We created such technology for Mars missions and … ants helped us in this challenge. Travel to Mars is a challenging project.  It is important to be prepared to coming problems. The first sign of a tension reveals itself in communication. But reading or eavesdropping on what people say is not a good idea. We need to understand the meaning of a message to..
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Ants help astronauts in Mars mission.
Technology opens new capabilities to see invisible, to hear unheard, but what about the ability to understand what we cannot even comprehend? For example, animal language, newly discovered ancient human languages … alien signals?  We created such technology for Mars missions and … ants helped us in this challenge. Travel to Mars is a challenging project.  It is important to be prepared to coming problems. The first sign of a tension reveals itself in communication. But reading or eavesdropping on what people say is not a good idea. We need to understand the meaning of a message to..
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Squid  proposes a hand to the possession of a bride.
"I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions" – these romantic words make perfect marriage proposal. But there is one creature who literally gives “hands” to the loved one. Squids, Cephalopod mollusks – the slithery swimmers of the deep waters have romantic way in breeding. Males literally give their “hands” away to their ladies. They detach long tentacles loaded with sperm, let them swim towards the female and crawl into reproductive ducts of her body. That’s it. With no further sweet talk male can swim away, hands will do the business. Happy days! &nbs..
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Spider's Valentine's gift
Our 8-legged friends have a reputation for being ruthless even with their loved ones - female spider can eat the groom even before they start to introduce themselves.  So, when a male spider “gets to know” the female spider it is not a conventional date with low light and wine, music playing softly with a quiet rumbling noises of the restaurant. None of that. Males simply give food to their females - flies that they recently caught in their webs. And while females are eating the males are onto their sexy business. But as fast as they may be, females are eating faster.  So some..
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Les sociétés d'insectes sont souvent considérées comme "super-organismes" plutôt que comme groupes d’individus. Ce concept philosophique de la démographie adaptative a été développé par E. Wilson. Selon ce concept, une colonie de fourmis maintient un ratio constant des travailleurs, des sous-castes et d'âges. La question du "Comment ?" reste sans réponse, parce que personne ne semble envisager sérieusement l’importance des interactions personnelles, de l'apprentissage, de la prise de décisions et de la créativité chez les fourmis. Nous ne pouvons pas non plus nier que, dans une colonie de..
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How to travel  if the conditions are challening?  In this blog we will discuss what solutions from living nature are available if we want to move fast but all around is shaky and wobbly and nothing to lean  on? Is it possible at all? – Yes, that is possible. The solution was found by monkeys and apes. When branches are too thin they they go UNDER the branches,hang down and swing!  This locomotion is called brachiation: the body of an animal works as a pendulum and the springy branches accelerate the motion as an elastic springboard. Here we see the manifestat..
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Le génie des fourmis
Deux fourmis de génie font preuve de coopération et de pensée inventive, se servent d'un outil et, de plus,  « connaissent » et utilisent la physique fondamentale : le levier pour soulever la branche. Nous observions deux fourmis rouges des bois F. pratensis Retz. transportaient une jambe de criquet vers leur nid. La plus grosse partie de la patte de l'insecte se retrouva à un moment coincée sous une petite branche sèche, qui se révéla trop grosse et trop lourde pour être maniée par une fourmi. Après quelques tentatives infructueuses pour passer l’obstacle, ell..
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Ants-inventors
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Two genius ants show cooperation, inventive thinking, operating with a tool and moreover... “knowing” and using basic physics: creating a lever for lifting the branch.   Two red wood ants F. pratensis Retz. were carrying a locust leg to the nest. The largest part of the locust leg happened to get stuck under a small, dry tree branch (which is very big and heavy for an ant). Attempts to move thi obstacle were fruitless and ants left the prey and started to wander around searching for something. We thought that they had given up and had decided to..
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Cards for corporate training in creative thinking
While searching for different corporate activity games I found lots of interesting examples of cards but they all like "card of the day" option, it is not possible to play these cards . In fact the task to develop games is not trivial at all. We created the pictures and thought about cards 10 years ago but only now came up with ideas of how to play. Maybe because we realised why people need to play these cards. Providing workshops on inventive problem-solving and especially during in-house training a consultant usually deals with well-educated experts, who are successful in their own domain an..
CHALLENGE 2 How to be adaptable staying the same?
    Why leaves of a rowan-tree, some parasites from guts and ....  teeth are similar?  Because they have similar inventive answer to similar challenge –SEGMENTTION. Segmentation improves the flexibility, adaptability and reliability of a system. Segmentation involves weakening the connections between elements, changing the parameters of links between elements, splitting a system into independent parts, making a system dismountable, or by making a continuous process discrete (breaking a task or activity into smaller parts that are easier to solve or deal wi..
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Ants as individuals
Insect societies are often treated as “super-organisms” rather than groups of individuals. Within this philosophical view the concept of adaptive demography was developed by E. Wilson. According to this concept, an ant colony maintains a constant ratio of workers, sub-castes and ages. The question of “How?” remains without answer because nobody seems to seriously consider the importance of personal interaction, learning, decision-making and creativity amongst ants. We also cannot deny that in an ant colony a conflict of interest between cooperating ‘colleagues’ takes place and plays an importa..
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