Natural Creatures Research Articles

HUKUM SESAJEN DALAM PESTA PERNIKAHAN MENURUT PERSPEKTIF HUKUM ISLAM

The purpose of this study is to find out the Law of Offerings in Weddings According to the Perspective of Islamic Law. This research is a qualitative research. The subjects of this research are residents of Pagutan Village, Manyaran District, Wonogiri Regency, Central Java Province. Collecting data in this study using observation, interviews and documentation. Then this study uses data analysis, namely data reduction, data presentation and data lever. The results in this study indicate that the customs of the surrounding community are accustomed to the culture of offerings such as the types and functions of offerings such as the offerings of pairs of tarub, offerings of siraman, offerings of midodaren, and finally offerings of Panggih. While the function of the offering itself according to the Javanese community as a form of spiritual negotiation between humans and supernatural powers so that these super natural creatures or essences are not harmful. From the above statement that the tradition of offerings at weddings according to Islamic law is included in the fasid habit. Because it contradicts the verses in the Koran. Therefore, the act of entering into major shirk which is prohibited in Islam can even expel someone from Islam. So, the law of carrying out this ritual of marriage offerings is haram.

Marine-Derived Compounds Applied in Cardiovascular Diseases: Submerged Medicinal Industry

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are among the most impactful illnesses globally. Currently, the available therapeutic option has several side effects, including hypotension, bradycardia, arrhythmia, and alteration in different ion concentrations. Recently, bioactive compounds from natural sources, including plants, microorganisms, and marine creatures, have gained a lot of interest. Marine sources serve as reservoirs for new bioactive metabolites with various pharmacological activities. The marine-derived compound such as omega-3 acid ethyl esters, xyloketal B, asperlin, and saringosterol showed promising results in several CVDs. The present review focuses on marine-derived compounds' cardioprotective potential for hypertension, ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, and atherosclerosis. In addition to therapeutic alternatives, the current use of marine-derived components, the future trajectory, and restrictions are also reviewed.

A Shape Memory Alloy-Based Soft Actuator Mimicking an Elephant's Trunk.

Soft actuators that execute diverse motions have recently been proposed to improve the usability of soft robots. Nature-inspired actuators, in particular, are emerging as a means of accomplishing efficient motions based on the flexibility of natural creatures. In this research, we present an actuator capable of executing multi-degree-of-freedom motions that mimics the movement of an elephant's trunk. Shape memory alloys (SMAs) that actively react to external stimuli were integrated into actuators constructed of soft polymers to imitate the flexible body and muscles of an elephant's trunk. The amount of electrical current provided to each SMA was adjusted for each channel to achieve the curving motion of the elephant's trunk, and the deformation characteristics were observed by varying the quantity of current supplied to each SMA. It was feasible to stably lift and lower a cup filled with water by using the operation of wrapping and lifting objects, as well as effectively performing the lifting task of surrounding household items of varying weights and forms. The designed actuator is a soft gripper that incorporates a flexible polymer and an SMA to imitate the flexible and efficient gripping action of an elephant trunk, and its fundamental technology is expected to be used as a safety-enhancing gripper that requires environmental adaptation.

Deer or Horses with Antlers? Wooden Figures Adorning Herders in the Altai

Among the burials of horse herders who lived in the 4th–3rd centuries BCE Altai Mountains of South Siberia were some that contained small wooden figures of four-legged hoofed animals that represent horses, deer, or hybrid creatures. They decorated headgear buried with select commoners of the Pazyryk Culture. Although the people, material possessions, and horses of the elites were frequently ornamented with imagery often associated with the so-called Scytho-Siberian animal style, these figurines are generally more realistic and less stylized representations of natural creatures, either cervids or horses. There is, however, ambiguity in these representations; in some cases, figures that are horses have inset recesses on the tops of their heads, in addition to holes for ear inserts. This recalls the elaborate headdresses on some horses outfitted with large displays of antlers or horns made of wood, leather, and felt buried with the Pazyryk leaders. The implication of this ambiguity is explored here. Horses were “cultural capital and tokens of clout” (see Andreeva Introduction, this volume) in the Pazyryk Culture, as well as the base of the economy. Deer were foundational to older belief systems in Siberia. The commingling of horse, mountain goat/ibex, and deer features in Pazyryk Culture imagery has inspired this study.

Bioinspired Superwettable Catheters with Tunable Structural Color for Efficient Drug Release Monitoring

AbstractMedical interventional catheters are indispensable medical devices that are continuing to reshape current practice in many specialties of clinical applications. However, there has been rapid development of catheters, it remains many challenges in antibiofilm and effective drug delivering. Inspired by natural creatures, a bioinspired superwettable catheter is developed which is constructed with inverse opal photonic crystals hydrogel. The superwettability property is achieved by creating a slippery liquid‐infused porous surface (SLIPS) where the motion state of droplets changes. The expansion and contraction of the hydrogel endow the catheter with tunable structural color and drug release properties. Thus, the catheter could not only report the variation of the drug release process via SLIPS phenomenon obviously but also quantitatively give feedback on the drug release process through visually structural color variations. The multifunctional superwettable catheter shows good antibacterial performance and can be used for drug release monitoring which has excellent prospects in biomedical applications.

Fishery Potential of the Most Polluted River of India: Kolong River, Nagaon, Assam, India

According to Indian Yogic concept, human body is made up of five elements – air, water, fire, earth and space. Water is vital for the survival of many small and big living creatures of mother nature. Great civilizations flourished on the banks of rivers. The Kolong river, which was once a vibrant river, has transformed into the most polluted river, due to anthropogenic activities. The present work needs much attention, as even Central Pollution Control Board (2013) listed the Kolong river among 71 most polluted rivers of India. It is very important to scrutinize the water quality and ecological health of the river by analyzing the fishery potential along with recent hydrochemistry of the river. The study has been undertaken in four sites – Samoguri, Nagaon town, Jagi-bhakatgaon and Kajalimukh (Mayong), respectively in pre- monsoon, monsoon, retreating monsoon and winter from the period of July 2021 to July 2022. Fish samples were collected through experimental fishing methods and with the help of fishermen. Physico-chemical parameters were analyzed as per guidelines of APHA (American Public Health Association), 2017. The study revealed the presence of 40 different species belonging to 32 genera and 19 families of fishes. The river is the habitat of 2 critically endangered, 2 endangered and 3 near threatened fish species. Analysis of physico-chemical parameters revealed that the water quality of the river is very poor in the urban site, due to anthropogenic activities. Literatures are very scanty regarding the fishery potential of the river. Therefore, the present study will highlight the measures of control of pollution, thus improving ecological health of the river. The study recommends the minimization of pollution caused by anthropogenic activities to revive the ecological health of the river.

Recent advances in bio-inspired ionic liquid-based interfacial materials from preparation to application.

Natural creatures always display unique and charming functions, such as the adhesion of mussels and the lubrication of Nepenthes, to maintain their life activities. Bio-inspired interfacial materials infused with liquid, especially for ionic liquids (ILs), have been designed and prepared to meet the emerging and rising needs of human beings. In this review, we first summarize the recent development of bio-inspired IL-based interfacial materials (BILIMs), ranging from the synthesis strategy to the design principle. Then, we discuss the advanced applications of BILIMs from anti-adhesive aspects (e.g., anti-biofouling, anti-liquid fouling, and anti-solid fouling) to adhesive aspects (e.g., biological sensor, adhesive tape, and wound dressing). Finally, the current limitations and future prospects of BILIMs are provided to feed the actual needs.

A New Model Inspired by the Pompeii Worm to Reverse Overheating in Nanosatellites

“Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, a mistress above all masters, are labouring in vain.” attributed to Leonardo DaVinci Nanosatellites are exposed to extreme temperatures on the spacecraft surface, which can reach up to ±100 °C. In this paper, we suggest a novel solution to this challenge by the use of biomimicry. The imitation of the behavior of living creatures in nature is an attempt to understand and synthesize a natural object or phenomenon in an abstract or concrete form. This inspiration from living things in nature can come through the materials, processes, or designs we see around us, and there is no engineering effort involved. In nature, the best example of temperature reversal is the Pompeii worm. The Pompeii worm realizes the conversion of the excess heat it is exposed to into cooling inside a multilayered tube. In this work, inspired by the strategy of the Pompeii worm in reversing overheating, we present a new model for the overheating problem in nanosatellites.

Numerical Modeling of Sediment-flow around Obstacle Inspired by Marine Sponges: Considering Body Configurations

Coral reefs are exposed to extinction due to the sediment blocking through coral colonies. In this condition, there is no practical solution that originates from nature. Among all aquatic animals, marine tubular sponges have marvelous mechanisms. These natural creatures can inspire the design of a device for managing sediment-flow hydrodynamics. They suck flow from body perforation and pump water and undigested materials from the top outlet. Therefore, coinciding with receiving nutrients, the flow becomes circulated. This may help the momentum transfer through the coral colonies. In the current study, a synthetic sponge by motivating the tubular sponges was designed. Synthetic sponges’ suction/pumping discharge was constant at 150 L/h. They have a body diameter of 8 and 15 cm and a height of 20 cm. The perforation area distribution changes to understand how it may influence sediment-flow hydrodynamics. The numerical modeling based on Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equations and image processing technique (surface LIC) were deployed to determine the vortical flow patterns. Results confirmed that choosing the best body perforation configuration and area distribution can generate the dipole vortex. In this condition, a tornado combines with dipole and erodes the sediments to ≈ 30% near the bed. Moreover, the sediment concentration reduces to ≈ 20% in the water column at X/D =1. In this condition, it can be observed that the emergence of specific vorticities and re-circulations develops the suspension of particles. Therefore, the synthetic sponge with precise design can be practical for enhancing the momentum transferring and preventing pollutant blockage among coral colonies.

Bioinspired Surfaces Derived from Acoustic Waves for On-Demand Droplet Manipulations.

The controllable manipulation and transfer of droplets are fundamental in a wide range of chemical reactions and even life processes. Herein, we present a novel, universal, and straightforward acoustic approach to fabricating biomimetic surfaces for on-demand droplet manipulations like many natural creatures. Based on the capillary waves induced by surface acoustic waves, various polymer films could be deformed into pre-designed structures, such as parallel grooves and grid-like patterns. These structured and functionalized surfaces exhibit impressive ability in droplet transportation and water collection, respectively. Besides these static surfaces, the tunability of acoustics could also endow polymer surfaces with dynamic controllability for droplet manipulations, including programming wettability, mitigating droplet evaporation, and accelerating chemical reactions. Our approach is capable of achieving universal surface manufacturing and droplet manipulation simultaneously, which simplifies the fabrication process and eliminates the need for additional chemical modifications. Thus, we believe that our acoustic-derived surfaces and technologies could provide a unique perspective for various applications, including microreactor integration, biochemical reaction control, tissue engineering, and so on.

Menganalisis Mata Pelajaran Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam Di Kelas IV Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Muhammadiyah Pulau Tengah Kecamatan Tambang Kabupaten Kampar

The purpose of this study was to analyze learning materials about ecosystems and life processes in natural science subjects in class IV Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Muhammadiyah Tengah Island, Tambang District, Kampar Regency. Ecosystems in the world are divided into two, namely natural ecosystems and artificial ecosystems. Natural ecosystems consist of aquatic ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems. Water ecosystems themselves consist of freshwater ecosystems and saltwater ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems consist of forest, grassland, desert, tundra and taiga ecosystems. Artificial ecosystems are ecosystems created by humans to meet human needs. Every living thing that exists on this earth certainly experiences the process of life. The process of life occurs in humans, animals, plants and all living things that exist in nature. In the process of life, creatures in nature certainly need many things, such as the need to sustain life in nature. Humans, plants and animals are living things. Humans breathe, plants grow tall, animals move

A study of Santals as children of nature in the light of Santal folktales

South Asian nations are home to the Santal tribe. Even though they are dispersed over several nations, most of the Santal are found in India and Bangladesh. The Santal people describe themselves largely as natural beings. This assertion has found support from some scholars who have analysed the Santal rituals and festivals. However, very few studies have tried to define the identity of the Santals from a literary perspective. Therefore, by examining their folktales, this article aims to demonstrate the idea that the Santal are children of nature. The study was guided by The National Folklore Theory, Cultural Functional Theory, and Theory of Reality. The qualitative research was based on a textual analysis of 27 Santal folktales. The rationale of this paper is that Santal folktales serve as a repository of knowledge about their customs, cultures and identities. From the study findings, it is clear that the Santals live in and through nature. They have such intimate relations with nature as one would have with a parent or sibling. They emulate the simplicity of nature in their lifestyle. Even the spirits they worship and revere are thought to reside in nature. Therefore, the Santal are born from nature and exist in mutually beneficial and shared spaces with other creatures in nature.

Bio-Inspired Transparent Soft Jellyfish Robot.

Jellyfish are among the widely distributed nature creatures that can effectively control the fluidic flow around their transparent soft body, thus achieving movements in the water and camouflage in the surrounding environments. Till now, it remains a challenge to replicate both transparent appearance and functionalities of nature jellyfish in synthetic systems due to the lack of transparent actuators. In this work, a fully transparent soft jellyfish robot is developed to possess both transparency and bio-inspired omni motions in water. This robot is driven by transparent dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) using hybrid silver nanowire networks and conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate)/waterborne polyurethane as compliant electrodes. The electrode exhibits large stretchability, low stiffness, high transmittance, and excellent conductivity at large strains. Consequently, the highly transparent DEA based on this hybrid electrode, with Very-High-Bond membranes as dielectric layers and polydimethylsiloxane as top coating, can achieve a maximum area strain of 146% with only 3% hysteresis loss. Driven by this transparent DEA, the soft jellyfish robot can achieve vertical and horizontal movements in water, by mimicking the actual pulsating rhythm of an Aurelia aurita. The bio-inspired robot can serve multiple functions as an underwater soft robot. The hybrid electrodes and bio-inspired design approach are potentially useful in a variety of soft robots and flexible devices.

Ecocritical Hues in Christy Lefteri’s “Songbirds”: The Dissolution of the Human/Nonhuman Distinction

The human/nonhuman distinction is a significant theme in ecocriticism, which tries to undermine this dichotomy and make us rethink the human relationship with nature and other creatures. This paper argues that Christy Lefteri’s latest novel Songbirds (2021) dispels this hierarchical dualism through the portrayal of a golden mouflon ovis, a wild sheep native to the Caspian region and an extremely meaningful animal in the story: it comes to represent nature and eventually leads to the assimilation of the human and nonhuman spheres. By comparing the description of the mouflon ovis with the hedgehog in “The Mower” (1979) by Philip Larkin, I will attempt to bring to the foreground the similarities between both animal representations and the strong ecocritical hues in Lefteri’s description. Furthermore, the paper aims to show how the author depicts an interspecies and inter-elemental community – in which not only the animate dimension, but also the inanimate sphere is given value and importance – through the representation of the mouflon ovis, the motif of gold and specific passages in the novel.

CGUN-2A: Deep Graph Convolutional Network via Contrastive Learning for Large-Scale Zero-Shot Image Classification

Taxonomy illustrates that natural creatures can be classified with a hierarchy. The connections between species are explicit and objective and can be organized into a knowledge graph (KG). It is a challenging task to mine features of known categories from KG and to reason on unknown categories. Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) has recently been viewed as a potential approach to zero-shot learning. GCN enables knowledge transfer by sharing the statistical strength of nodes in the graph. More layers of graph convolution are stacked in order to aggregate the hierarchical information in the KG. However, the Laplacian over-smoothing problem will be severe as the number of GCN layers deepens, which leads the features between nodes toward a tendency to be similar and degrade the performance of zero-shot image classification tasks. We consider two parts to mitigate the Laplacian over-smoothing problem, namely reducing the invalid node aggregation and improving the discriminability among nodes in the deep graph network. We propose a top-k graph pooling method based on the self-attention mechanism to control specific node aggregation, and we introduce a dual structural symmetric knowledge graph additionally to enhance the representation of nodes in the latent space. Finally, we apply these new concepts to the recently widely used contrastive learning framework and propose a novel Contrastive Graph U-Net with two Attention-based graph pooling (Att-gPool) layers, CGUN-2A, which explicitly alleviates the Laplacian over-smoothing problem. To evaluate the performance of the method on complex real-world scenes, we test it on the large-scale zero-shot image classification dataset. Extensive experiments show the positive effect of allowing nodes to perform specific aggregation, as well as homogeneous graph comparison, in our deep graph network. We show how it significantly boosts zero-shot image classification performance. The Hit@1 accuracy is 17.5% relatively higher than the baseline model on the ImageNet21K dataset.

Biomimetic Wave Propagation in Magnetic Soft Actuator

In this paper, a simple but effective method is proposed to generate a bio-mimic wave propagating motion in a magnetic soft actuator. Two examples, a metachronal wave in artificial cilia and a crawling motion of an artificial caterpillar, are shown as demonstrations. These are kinds of wave propagating motions which are popular in natural systems and are also primitive systems of natural creatures. In the proposed system, an elastic material and a magnetic powder were used to fabricate a flexible magnetic structure. There are 2 essential features in the system; one is periodic arrangement of magnetic anisotropy, and the other is application of a rotating magnetic field. Using this method of wave generation, we realized drastic change in flow making behavior of artificial cilia and a crawling motion very similar to living caterpillars. The proposed system would be useful to enhance the field of the bio-mimic soft robotics.

Biomimetic Superhydrophobic Materials Construct from Binary Structure: A Review on Design, Properties, and Applications

AbstractIn recent decades, the development of biomimetic superhydrophobic surface structures has allowed several properties of superhydrophobic materials to be increasingly developed. This review addresses mainly three aspects. First, two kinds of structures with superhydrophobic properties: binary structures and unitary structures, are analyzed and compared. The binary structure, which includes micro‐ and nanostructures, is responsible for the development of superhydrophobicity in most natural creatures and artificial materials. And hierarchical binary structures, which combine micro‐ and nanoscale structures, actually perform better at superhydrophobic. Second, various properties of superhydrophobic materials achieved through binary structures, including self‐cleaning, antireflection, drag‐reduction, and mechanically robust and durable superhydrophobic surfaces are summarized. Each structure possesses both superiority and vulnerability. The combination of various structures can help develop adaptable and practical materials. Finally, the combinations of different properties in superhydrophobic via using a binary structure are enumerated. Materials with various properties can adapt to different working environments.

Multi-agent border defense differential game based on biological predation and escape behavior in an obstacle environment

The pursuit-evasion and reach-avoid problems based on differential games are the key problems of multi-agent confrontation control. This paper studies a multi-agent border defense differential game in a bounded area with a line obstacle. First, by analyzing the predation and escape behavior of creatures in nature, the multi-agent border defense differential game system is modeled, and the game termination conditions and value functions are obtained in different situations. Second, this paper analyzes the dominance regions and barrier surfaces of the game in the presence of a line obstacle and compares it with the obstacle-free situation. Finally, numerical simulations show that the proposed method satisfies the conditions of the saddle-point strategy in the differential game and verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A Bio-Inspired Flapping-Wing Robot With Cambered Wings and Its Application in Autonomous Airdrop

Flapping-wing flight, as the distinctive flight method retained by natural flying creatures, contains profound aerodynamic principles and brings great inspirations and encouragements to drone developers. Though some ingenious flapping-wing robots have been designed during the past two decades, development and application of autonomous flapping-wing robots are less successful and still require further research. Here, we report the development of a servo-driven bird-like flapping-wing robot named USTBird-I and its application in autonomous airdrop. Inspired by birds, a camber structure and a dihedral angle adjustment mechanism are introduced into the airfoil design and motion control of the wings, respectively. Computational fluid dynamics simulations and actual flight tests show that this bionic design can significantly improve the gliding performance of the robot, which is beneficial to the execution of the airdrop mission. Finally, a vision-based airdrop experiment has been successfully implemented on USTBird-I, which is the first demonstration of a bird-like flapping-wing robot conducting an outdoor airdrop mission.

A Versatile Ionomer‐Based Soft Actuator with Multi‐Stimulus Responses, Self‐Sustainable Locomotion, and Photoelectric Conversion

AbstractThe prospects of endowing artificial robotics or devices with increasingly complex and emergent life‐like behaviors have attracted growing interest in the soft functional materials that mimic the versatile motions of living creatures in the iridescent nature. However, despite the flourishing achievements so far, soft actuators capable of sensitive multi‐stimulus responses and self‐sustainable movements, have been extensively pursued to reduce control complexity yet remains a challenging target. Here, through material‐structural synergistic design incorporating stress‐mismatching structure, high pseudo‐negative coefficient of thermal expansion of perfluoro‐sulfonic acid ionomer, comprehensive converting properties of carbon nanotube, and anisotropic large thermal expansion of PE polymer, an ionomer‐based bilayer actuator is proposed, presenting high‐performance actuation of various forms and nice stability, responsive to light (including sunlight without focusing, LED light), low voltage, mild heating, and humidity/solvent change. With a built‐in structural feedback loop, the actuation performances are further explored to realize intelligent systems, including: 1) self‐sustainable locomotion under sunlight irradiation with adjustable photophobic and phototropic direction as well as adaption to different topographies and loading conditions, 2) self‐sustainable oscillation and solar‐electric generating, and 3) bionic floristic reaction according to environmental change. These diversified actuation modes allow promising following‐up designs for bio‐hybrid soft robotics fueled by and harmonized with natural environments.