slime mold

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slime mold

1. Any of various eukaryotic organisms of the class Dictyostelia that exist as free-living amoeboid cells in the soil and under certain conditions aggregate into a mass that develops into a stalked sporangium. Also called cellular slime mold.

2. Any of various eukaryotic organisms of the class Myxogastria (formerly Myxomycetes) that develop from amoeboid cells into a large multinucleate plasmodium that produces stalked sporangia. Also called myxomycete, plasmodial slime mold.

References in periodicals archive ?

de Oliveira, "Brazilian highways from slime mold's point of view," Kybernetes, vol.

A bio-inspired method for the constrained shortest path problem

Food quality and the risk of light exposure affect patch-choice decisions in the slime mold Physarum polycephalum.

Caging the blob: using a slime mold to teach concepts about barriers that constrain the movement of organisms

John Bonner, who named the chemical used in slime mold communication after the witch in The Faerie Queene (and whose lab was visited by a curious Albert Einstein), also found cases of maladaptive emergence.

Our computing kin

Slime mold may took like just a blob, but it's a smart one.

Slimy, but smart

Comparing it to global warming, Browning (economics, Texas A&M U.) argues that what he calls the welfare state costs American taxpayers much more than politicians or the media will admit, and turns recipients into slime mold. The fundamental problem, he says, is the rise of egalitarian ideological principles.

Stealing from each other; how the welfare state robs Americans of money and spirit

Stachybotrys is a slime mold that can produce toxic chemicals called mycotoxins.

Mold found in school offices; Town taking steps to make building safe

When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, a single-celled slime mold constructs networks of nutrient-channeling tubes strikingly similar to the layout of the Japanese rail system, researchers report January 22 in Science.

Slime mold as master engineer: organism builds network that echoes Tokyo's rail system

Just as the slime mold is one of the best-studied examples of cooperative behavior, the future of biology calls for greater inter-disciplinary collaboration, according to a National Research Council Committee on the direction of the field.

The role of theory in advancing 21st-century biology; catalyzing transformative research

Featuring color photographs on almost every page, this atlas demonstrates the fabrication of computer chips, sensors, image processors, logical gates, memristors, self-healing wires, and memory devices built with the slime mold Physarum polycephalum.

Atlas of Physarum Computing

Andrew Adamatzky (University of the West of England, Bristol, UK) and Theresa Schubert (Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany) have constructed logical circuits that exploit networks of interconnected slime mold tubes to process information.

Logical Circuits Built Using Living Slime Molds

They found that slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system.

Slime may help solve traffic problems

I applaud your coverage of the BioBlitz in the National Capital Area ("30 Hours with Team Slime Mold," SN: 7/29/06, p.