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Once I built a railroad, now it's done
I have probably mentioned before that in high school I did a science project on the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum which involved converting a fish tank into an incubator and breeding E. coli as a food source—I'm guessing that might not be legal anymore—in order to study the effects of plenty, starvation, and time on D. discoideum's life cycle (which is awesome: amoeba to slug to fruiting body to spore; rinse, repeat). It was incredibly fun. I read a lot about cyclic AMP. I took dozens of photographs through a microscope. I had no moral qualms about eating mushrooms. And it still makes me happy to see plasmodial slime mold in the wild, as happens when walking in the woods. But I think that even were I totally indifferent to the concept of slime mold, this article in The Economist would still be a thing of beauty:
Tokyo's is not the first transport network to be modelled in this way. A study published in December by Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones of the University of the West of England used oat flakes to represent Britain's principal cities. Slime moulds modelled the motorway network of the island quite accurately, with the exception of the M6/M74 into Scotland (the creatures chose to go through Newcastle rather than past Carlisle).
Science, I love you.
Tokyo's is not the first transport network to be modelled in this way. A study published in December by Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones of the University of the West of England used oat flakes to represent Britain's principal cities. Slime moulds modelled the motorway network of the island quite accurately, with the exception of the M6/M74 into Scotland (the creatures chose to go through Newcastle rather than past Carlisle).
Science, I love you.
no subject
I had the pleasure of telling Tom Disch that the title of Camp Concentration is an astonishing unintended pun, as it is probably true that there is nothing in a neuron that you could measure that would tell you more about its behavior than its cAMP concentration.
no subject
I can talk about the radio frequency of neutral hydrogen, too. 1.42 GHz all the way.
(Are you sure? I find it hard to believe I haven't rhapsodized at you about slime mold before. Clearly we don't take enough forest walks together.)
as it is probably true that there is nothing in a neuron that you could measure that would tell you more about its behavior than its cAMP concentration.
Cute!