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- In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, Columbia University researchers present several devices powered by the shrinking and swelling of bacterial spores in response to changes in humidity.
- "People before us had shown that the spores change shape in response to humidity," Sahin told The Post. "They shrink when they're dry and expand when exposed to moisture. But in our studies, we found them to be surprisingly rigid. That told us that this shape change must come with a lot of energy. In the beginning, I was just amazed at this biological substance. But then I thought, there must be applications for this."
These guys can actually power lightbulbs off the energy generated!
I actually worked with Ozgur Sahin for a bit when I joined Columbia as a Ph.D. student. He is an insanely creative and intelligent person who has tons of ideas about how to use the physical properties of biological systems to solve existing problems in engineering and the like. Really happy that people are paying attention to his work.