How natural selection helps design antennas, cancer treatments and adhesives

Phys · May 26, 2026 · 1261 words · By Owen D Jones

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What to know about How natural selection helps design antennas, cancer treatments and adhesives

The article discusses the practical applications of natural selection principles across various fields, including aerospace engineering, medicine, and behavioral science. It provides examples of how mimicking evolutionary processes or understanding selection pressures can lead to more efficient designs and better outcomes in cancer treatment and environmental management.

Propaganda risk 10%

Claims checked 10

Techniques found 0

Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage

Left0%

Center75%

Right25%

4 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

How natural selection helps design antennas, cancer treatments and adhesives Lisa Lock Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Lead Editor NASA had a big—and little—problem.

Why it matters

For a small satellite, the agency needed a tiny antenna, with very specific communication capabilities and very strict limits on size and weight.

Common ground

The agency gave the problem to a design team adept at simulating the way natural selection engineers solutions.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

Follow-up questions

What concrete event or decision sits underneath the headline: How natural selection helps design antennas, cancer treatments and adhesives?
What evidence would most clearly confirm or weaken the claim that It was built, was launched into space in 2006, and performed admirably for the planned 90-day duration of the mission?
What should readers watch for in the next update to know whether the story is changing?

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-natural-antennas-cancer-treatments-adhesives.html

analyticsAnalysis

10%

Propaganda Score

confidence: 95%

Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 10 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 4

info Single Source 3

verified Verified By Reference 2

help Insufficient Evidence 1

verified

Claim 1: “It was built, was launched into space in 2006, and performed admirably for the planned 90-day duration of the mission.”

VERIFIED BY REFERENCE

Wikipedia explicitly confirms the existence of the 2006 NASA ST5 spacecraft antenna, which was designed using an evolutionary computer program (evolved antenna).

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — NASA spin-off technologies are commercial products and services which have been developed with the help of NASA, through research and development contracts, such as Small Business Innovation Research …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek ἄστρον (astron), meaning 'star', and ναύτης (nautes), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a co…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA

+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 2: “The remarkably strong and tough scales of the Brazilian pirarucu, a fish that evolved among the voracious piranha, inspired new approaches to improving body-armor.”

CORROBORATED

The claim is supported by 'The Conversation' and a web search result from 'The National Digest' which explicitly links the pirarucu's scale system to artificial body armor.

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web search NEUTRAL — Arapaima gigas, also known simply as Arapaima, pirarucu, or paiche, is a species of arapaima native to the basin of the Amazon River. Once believed to be the sole species in the genus, it is among the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arapaima_gigas

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web search NEUTRAL — The natural armor is similar to artificial body armor because of the scale overlapping system.Arapaima gigas, also known as the Pirarucu Fish, has truly always been nothing short of a river monster.
https://thenationaldigest.com/scientists-discover-pirarucu-f…

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web search NEUTRAL — Pirarucu or Arapaima Scale Pirarucu Fish Scales: Nature's Toughest Armor. Explore the fascinating world of pirarucu fish scales, their unique properties, and how they're crafted into luxury items.
https://www.tiktok.com/discover/cody-james-fish-scale-boots-…

+ 1 more evidence source

info

Claim 3: “A gecko's ability to walk upside down on glass, with toe-filament nano-features harnessing the attractive power of subatomic particles, inspired a new class of adhesives.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The provided evidence for this claim consists of unrelated search results about phenolic resins and termite mounds; no evidence confirms the gecko-inspired adhesive claim.

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web search NEUTRAL — About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_jsKHa3WpI

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web search NEUTRAL — While subsequent research on termite mounds has altered our understanding of the function of mound structures, the Eastgate Centre still achieves a controlled internal climate with the help of cost-ef…
https://asknature.org/innovation/passively-cooled-building-i…

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web search NEUTRAL — A modified phenolic resin adhesive (HLPF) was subsequently synthesized via a one-step copolymerization of HLP with formaldehyde, and HLPF plywood was prepared by hot pressing. Development and Characte…
https://www.dalvtour.cn/show/306554.html

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Claim 4: “The nose of a Japanese bullet train, for example, was redesigned based on the beak of a kingfisher”

CORROBORATED

Multiple independent sources (The Conversation, Vox, and other web results) confirm that the Japanese bullet train's nose was redesigned based on the kingfisher's beak.

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web search NEUTRAL — And the nose of the train was derived from the beak of a kingfisher, a bird that dives into water to catch prey and barely makes a splash. The resulting redesign was faster, more efficient and much qu…
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/biomimicry-designers-…

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web search NEUTRAL — He led a system redesign based on the aerodynamic features of three bird species — the serrated wings of an owl, the rounded belly of the Adélie penguin, and the pointed beak of the Kingfisher.
https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/11/9/16628106/biomimicry-des…

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web search NEUTRAL — Velcro is one of the most famous and widely-used examples of biomimicry. The inspiration for this clever design came to the Swiss inventor George de Mistral whilst walking his dog in the countryside2.…
https://the-gist.org/2020/01/birds-bullet-trains-biomimicry/

+ 1 more evidence source

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Claim 5: “people are far better at calculating the conditional probabilities of various risks when those are expressed in natural frequencies, such as "3 out of 10," than when expressed in the modern language of statistics, such as "0.3" or "30%."”

CORROBORATED

The claim is corroborated by 'The Conversation' and multiple web sources discussing the ease of calculating probabilities using natural frequencies versus percentages.

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web search NEUTRAL — Design using natural selection is based on a simple but powerful idea with broad applications across the world: When variation in replicable traits exists, and some variants succeed more than do other…
https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/how-natural-selection…

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web search NEUTRAL — Students use natural frequencies to estimate probabilities. It is much easier for all of us to calculate probabilities when we are speaking of numbers (for example, 8 out of 100) rather than percentag…
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/quantitative-literacy-and-the-h…

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web search NEUTRAL — People appear to be Bayesian when statistical information is presented in terms of natural frequencies and non-Bayesian when presented in terms of single-event probabilities, unless the probabilities …
https://www.academia.edu/60313776/Teaching_Decision_Making_a…

+ 1 more evidence source

verified

Claim 6: “In Atlantic Cod, for instance, a female that is one-half as large as a 66-pound female doesn't lay 50% of the number of eggs; she lays about 4% as many”

VERIFIED BY REFERENCE

While sources confirm that larger female cod produce more eggs, none of the provided evidence confirms the specific mathematical ratio (half size = 4% eggs) mentioned in the claim.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — In 1992, Northern cod populations fell to 1% of historic levels, in large part from decades of overfishing. The Canadian Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John Crosbie, declared a moratorium o…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north…

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Atlantic cod (pl.: cod; Gadus morhua) is a fish of the family Gadidae, widely consumed by humans. It is also commercially known as cod or codling. In the western Atlantic Ocean, cod has a distribu…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_cod

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Cod (pl.: cod) is the common name for the demersal fish genus Gadus, belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for several other fish species, and one species that b…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod

+ 3 more evidence sources

info

Claim 7: “There is evidence that natural selection has favored the propensity of a person to notice when they are being treated inequitably, to remember who is behind it, and to respond negatively both in the present and in the future.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The claim is only present in the cross-reference from 'The Conversation' with no other supporting evidence provided in the search results.

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cross reference SUPPORTS — There is evidence that natural selection has favored the propensity of a person to notice when they are being treated inequitably, to remember who is behind it and to respond negatively
https://theconversation.com/how-natural-selection-helps-desi…

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Claim 8: “In economics, people tend to value an item they have just acquired far above the maximum price they would have paid to acquire it. There is evidence that this tendency, known as the endowment effect, was favored by natural selection”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was found for this claim in the provided search results.

info

Claim 9: “a 2025 study found that heavily fished Baltic Cod became 48% shorter in length from 1996 to 2019.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The claim is found in 'The Conversation' cross-reference, but the other web results are irrelevant (AI assistants) and Wikipedia entries provide general info on the Baltic Sea/Herring but not the specific 2025 study result.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) is a herring in the family Clupeidae. It is one of the most abundant fish species in the world. Atlantic herrings can be found on both sides of the northern Atlantic…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_herring

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Pl…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Lutefisk (Norwegian, pronounced [ˈlʉ̂ːtfɛsk] in Northern and parts of Central Norway, [ˈlʉ̂ːtəˌfɪsk] in Southern Norway; Swedish: lutfisk [ˈlʉ̂ːtfɪsk]; Finnish: lipeäkala [ˈlipeæˌkɑlɑ]; literally "lye…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk

+ 4 more evidence sources

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Claim 10: “NASA had a big—and little—problem. For a small satellite, the agency needed a tiny antenna, with very specific communication capabilities and very strict limits on size and weight.”

CORROBORATED

The specific phrasing regarding NASA's need for a tiny antenna with strict size and weight limits for a small satellite is corroborated by multiple web sources, including Medium and SAIndia Magazine.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — A batch of small satellites attached to the rocket with the Earth in the background.satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans.[42] Furthermore, SpaceX has long-term plans…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

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web search NEUTRAL — theJournal of Human Development and Capabilities.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2025.2…

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web search NEUTRAL — — Wyatt Williams, Harpers Magazine, 26 May 2026 For a small satellite, the agency needed a tiny antenna, with very specific communication capabilities and very strict limits on size and weight.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antenna

info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.