At the 18th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University, awards that honor achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think" were handed out in ten categories. One of the categories was cognitive science: that's where the slime mold work was singled out.
[Here's the brief abstract: "The plasmodium of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large amoeba-like cell consisting of a dendritic network of tube-like structures (pseudopodia). It changes its shape as it crawls over a plain agar gel and,
if food is placed at two different points, it will put out pseudopodia that connect the two food sources. Here we show that this simple organism has the ability to find the minimum-length solution between two points in a labyrinth." Article "Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism" in Nature, Volume 407, Issue 6803, pp. 470 (2000)]Picture of slime mold at right is from Olympic National Park, USA (Possibly Physarum). Pic posted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mould
What I find myself distracted from - is reading and hearing about the presidential candidates' views on various issues.
Slime mold seems to rise to the top for me. I'm not proud of that.
1 comment:
This is the best comment on tonight's debate I've seen. Oblique, but a direct hit.
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