de Oliveira, "Brazilian highways from
slime mold's point of view," Kybernetes, vol.
Food quality and the risk of light exposure affect patch-choice decisions in the
slime mold Physarum polycephalum.
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.
Slime mold may took like just a blob, but it's a smart one.
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.
Stachybotrys is a
slime mold that can produce toxic chemicals called mycotoxins.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They found that
slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system.
I applaud your coverage of the BioBlitz in the National Capital Area ("30 Hours with Team
Slime Mold," SN: 7/29/06, p.
