Posted on 02/23/2021 4:47:23 PM PST by BenLurkin
The ability to store and recover information gives an organism a clear advantage when searching for food or avoiding harmful environments, and has been traditionally linked to organisms that have a nervous system. A new study authored by Mirna Kramar (MPIDS) and Prof. Karen Alim (TUM and MPIDS) challenges this view by uncovering surprising abilities of a highly dynamic, single-celled organism to store and retrieve information about its environment.
Physarum polycephalum has been puzzling researchers for many decades. Existing at the crossroads between the kingdoms of animals, plants and fungi, this unique organism provides insight into the early evolutionary history of eukaryotes. Its body is a giant single cell made up of interconnected tubes that form intricate networks. This single amoeba-like cell may stretch several centimeters or even meters, featuring as the largest cell on earth in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The striking abilities of the slime mold to solve complex problems such as finding the shortest path through a maze earned it the attribute "intelligent," intrigued the research community and kindled questions about decision making on the most basic levels of life. The decision-making ability of Physarum is especially fascinating given that its tubular network constantly undergoes fast reorganization—growing and disintegrating its tubes—while completely lacking an organizing center. The researchers discovered that the organism weaves memories of food encounters directly into the architecture of the network-like body and uses the stored information when making future decisions.
To find out what is going on, the researchers combine microscopic observations of the adaption of the tubular network with theoretical modeling. An encounter with food triggers the release of a chemical that travels from the location where food was found throughout the organism and softens the tubes in the network, making the whole organism reorient its migration towards the food.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Please see your optometrist.
A democrat?
UC Santa Cruz has always offered a wide-ranging physical education and recreation program designed to appeal to the greatest number of students, but it has based its approach on some uncommon ideas: that athletics are for all students, not just team members of major sports; that the most important goal of a collegiate physical education department should be to introduce as many students as possible to lifelong physical activities; and that the joy of participating is more important than winning.
how wonderful.
That is how we introduced sports in homeschool
Phys.org is often not that good.
We can all think of so many candidates for this.
Not to go off on a tangent, but this is an example of why i believe in intelligent design (God) and not evolution. Are we believe an organism like this just spontaneously sprung from the ooze?
.....”the joy of participating is more important than winning”.....
I find that difficult to believe....reality tells me that loosing is not fun at all no matter how much I may have ‘participated’. There’s always greater joy in winning!
“...with no nervous system that remembers food locations”
It’s doing better than my cat.
Correct. They simply post articles from original sources. Others include Science Daily, Eurekalert and others. They are simply an aggregator, so they have their place. Can’t visit every site regarding your interests, there are too many and most are worthless. A search engine has too many hits, most tangentially related.
Yeah, yet what if the participants are doing line dancing or jazz dancing or stretching to get limber or imagining to be trees and reaching and swaying. Physical fitness does not have to be a game of teams and scores.
Well kitty only needs to know your location.
She usually has my 20 down to the millimeter.
Someday we will have Massively Parallel Slime Mold computers that verify the blockchain.
Like Pelosi to an ice cream bar.
They should name it Maxine Waters, but that would be insulting the slime 😃.
How long does it take to solve a Rubik’s cube?
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