The French government has issued an official warning about Slime. The warning comes from ANSES [Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail]. It bears the headline “Le Slime, une pâte très prisée mais pas sans risque.” Here’s a machine-translation of the first paragraph: “ANSES and the DGCCRF alert consumers to […]
Tag: slime
Slime moulds and French motorway planning (new study)
Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi of Japan, and Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker of the UK, were jointly awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel Transportation Planning prize for using slime mould to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks. See: ‘Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design’ in […]
Music of the Slime Moulds
“Physarum polycephalum, hereafter referred to as Physarum goo, inhabits cool, moist, shaded areas over decaying plant matter, and it eats nutrients such as oat flakes, bacteria and dead organic matter. It is a biological computing substrate, which has been enjoying much popularity within the Unconventional Computing research community for its astonishing computational properties.” [For a […]
Fudge on hagfish slime
Kathryn Knight writes in the Journal of Experimental Biology: Hagfish [pictured here, in a NOAA photo] don’t score high on the fish charisma scale. They are very unattractive, have a reputation for devouring victims from the inside out and, if attacked, they instantly release litres of repulsive slime. However, despite their repelling habits, Douglas Fudge […]
Disgusting toolhandles (studies)
“People will not pick up a tool by the handle if it is physically disgusting.” This is one of the findings of a research group at the Psychology Department of The College of William & Mary* Virginia, US. Their 2013 study can be viewed here in ‘poster’ format – it’s entitled ‘So close and yet […]
Slimy Hairs in A Sensor from Andy
Yet another new paper from the prodigiously productive Andy Adamatzky: “Slimy Hairs: Hair Sensors Made With Slime Mould,” Andrew Adamatzky, arXiv:1306.2935, June 13, 2013. The paper explains: “Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided eye. We design a slime mould implementation of a tactile hair, where the slime mould responds to […]
Disgusting Slime [update & erratum]
An Improbable note for August 19th, 2011 was related to Exploring disgust-related tactile processes. At the time, we had not been able to discover the exact nature of the ‘disgusting’ material used in the experiment. We are now in a position to reveal the recipe for the disgusting dough-like substance – thanks to a full […]
Slimeball: A sticky weapon to immobilize large ships
Slime would become the US military’s prime weapon to immobilise large ships under a scheme outlined for the US Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College. Lieutenant Commander Daniel Whitehurst, a student at the college, figured out how to combine a raft of existing technologies to produce the officially “non-lethal” armament he calls The Slimeball. He prepared a report in […]