Biomimicry

"Technology inspired by the exoskeleton of a hardy desert bug is being aimed at big industrial problems, and investors are betting several million dollars that it could make a difference."

"In some of this planet’s driest regions, where rainfall is rare or even nonexistent, a few specialized plants and insects have devised ingenious strategies to provide themselves with the water necessary for life: They pull it right out of the air, from fog that drifts in from warm oceans nearby. Now researchers at MIT, working in collaboration with colleagues in Chile, are seeking to mimic that trick on a much larger scale, potentially supplying significant quantities of clean, potable water in places where there are few alternatives."

"In the Namib Desert of Africa, the fog-filled morning wind carries the drinking water for a beetle called the Stenocara. iny droplets collect on the beetle's bumpy back. The areas between the bumps are covered in a waxy substance that makes them water-repellant, or hydrophobic (water-fearing). Water accumulates on the water-loving, or hydrophilic, bumps, forming droplets that eventually grow too big to stay put, then roll down the waxy surface. [...]  More than a decade ago, news of this creature's efficient water collection system inspired engineers to try and reproduce these surfaces in the lab. Small-scale advances in fluid physics, materials engineering and nanoscience since that time have brought them close to succeeding."

Water is the source of life. However, with the boost of the global population and the sharp increase of the industrial water consumption, water resource is getting into crisis in the world wide. Therefore, the problem of water crisis has to be tackled urgently.