Download or read book Where the Slime Mould Creeps written by Sarah Lloyd and published by . This book was released on 2022-12-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This densely-packed book introduces the fascinating world of myxomycetes, the acellular slime moulds. It describes their intriguing life cycle and important ecological roles as decomposers, nutrient recyclers and food for numerous invertebrates. And it reveals their exquisite evocative forms through microscope and camera, along with time lapse images that capture the dramatic changes in colour and shape as the fruiting bodies mature.The past ten years has seen a burgeoning interest in slime moulds by photographers, students and enthusiasts who are captivated by their singular beauty. This popular and informative book-now in its fourth edition-is an aid to their identification, an illustrated glossary, and an account of a passion for slime moulds that has led to the discovery of a wealth of species inhabiting a tall wet eucalypt forest in central north Tasmania.

Download or read book Physarum Machines written by Andrew Adamatzky and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Physarum machine is a programmable amorphous biological computer experimentally implemented in the vegetative state of true slime mould Physarum polycephalum. It comprises an amorphous yellowish mass with networks of protoplasmic veins, programmed by spatial configurations of attracting and repelling gradients. This book demonstrates how to create experimental Physarum machines for computational geometry and optimization, distributed manipulation and transportation, and general-purpose computation. Being very cheap to make and easy to maintain, the machine also functions on a wide range of substrates and in a broad scope of environmental conditions. As such a Physarum machine is a 'green' and environmentally friendly unconventional computer. The book is readily accessible to a nonprofessional reader, and is a priceless source of experimental tips and inventive theoretical ideas for anyone who is inspired by novel and emerging non-silicon computers and robots. An account on Physarum Machines can be viewed at http: //www.youtube.com/user/PhysarumMachines.

Download or read book Inanimate Life written by George M. Briggs and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Myxomycetes written by Steven L. Stephenson and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2000-06-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book identifies all the species one is likely to encounter, with extensive information on their structural features, distribution, and ecological associations. Superbly illustrated, including keys, it is an introduction to their biology as well as a field guide. This book is only available through print on demand. All interior art is black and white.

Download or read book The Reckonings written by Lacy M. Johnson and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Unflinching and honest…both timely and timeless” (Houston Chronicle), this extraordinary collection of essays by the award-winning writer of The Other Side—rooted in her own experience with sexual assault—pursues questions that strike at the heart of our national conversation about the justness of society. In 2014, Lacy Johnson was giving a reading from The Other Side, her “instant classic” (Kirkus Reviews) memoir of kidnapping and rape, when a woman asked her what she would like to happen to her rapist. This collection “attempts to parcel out several knotted problems and suggests forms of meaningful justice” (Booklist, starred review). Drawing from philosophy, art, literature, mythology, anthropology, film, and her own experience of violence, Johnson considers how our ideas about justice might be expanded beyond vengeance and retribution to include acts of compassion, patience, mercy, and grace. “The Reckonings is not a book about changing the world. It’s philosophy in disguise, equal parts memoir, criticism, and ethics…The twelve essays deserve great consideration, while you read it and long after” (NPR). From “Speak Truth to Power,” about the condition of not being believed about rape and assault; to “Goliath,” about the ways evil is used as a form of social control; to “The Fallout,” about ecological and generational violence, Johnson creates masterful, elaborate, gorgeously written essays that speak incisively about our current era. She grapples with justice and retribution, truth and fairness, and sexual assault and workplace harassment, as well as the broadest societal wrongs: the BP Oil Spill, government malfeasance, police killings. The Reckonings is a powerful and necessary work, ambitious in its scope, which “challenges our culture’s expectations of justice and expose the limits of vengeance and mercy” (Ms. Magazine).

Download or read book Advances in Physarum Machines written by Andrew Adamatzky and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-09 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is devoted to Slime mould Physarum polycephalum, which is a large single cell capable for distributed sensing, concurrent information processing, parallel computation and decentralized actuation. The ease of culturing and experimenting with Physarum makes this slime mould an ideal substrate for real-world implementations of unconventional sensing and computing devices The book is a treatise of theoretical and experimental laboratory studies on sensing and computing properties of slime mould, and on the development of mathematical and logical theories of Physarum behavior. It is shown how to make logical gates and circuits, electronic devices (memristors, diodes, transistors, wires, chemical and tactile sensors) with the slime mould. The book demonstrates how to modify properties of Physarum computing circuits with functional nano-particles and polymers, to interface the slime mould with field-programmable arrays, and to use Physarum as a controller of microbial fuel cells. A unique multi-agent model of slime is shown to serve well as a software slime mould capable for solving problems of computational geometry and graph optimization. The multiagent model is complemented by cellular automata models with parallel accelerations. Presented mathematical models inspired by Physarum include non-quantum implementation of Shor's factorization, structural learning, computation of shortest path tree on dynamic graphs, supply chain network design, p-adic computing and syllogistic reasoning. The book is a unique composition of vibrant and lavishly illustrated essays which will inspire scientists, engineers and artists to exploit natural phenomena in designs of future and emergent computing and sensing devices. It is a 'bible' of experimental computing with spatially extended living substrates, it spanstopics from biology of slime mould, to bio-sensing, to unconventional computing devices and robotics, non-classical logics and music and arts.

Download or read book The Uses of Slime Mould written by Nicholas Mosley and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including pieces on Gregory Bateson, William Faulkner, Philip Pullman, Sir Oswald Mosley's politics, religion and stammering, this diverse collection gathers essays written by Nicholas Mosley over the past forty years. Resembling the behaviour of slime mould - a strange organism made up of separate amoebae that temporarily form a single pillar which then bursts in order to scatter its seeds across the forest floor - the ideas found in these essays converge and disperse, crossing over into other disciplines, and creating a unique way of looking at the world, one echoed in Mosley's fictional writings.

Download or read book Stink and the Attack of the Slime Mold written by Megan McDonald and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After learning about slime molds during the Saturday Science Club, Stink finds the organism growing in his room and starting to take over the world.

Download or read book The Social Amoebae written by John Tyler Bonner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-18 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted biologist and author John Tyler Bonner has experimented with cellular slime molds for more than sixty years, and he has done more than anyone else to raise these peculiar collections of amoebae from a minor biological curiosity to a major model organism--one that is widely studied for clues to the development and evolution of all living things. Now, five decades after he published his first pioneering book on cellular slime molds, Bonner steps back from the proliferating and increasingly specialized knowledge about the organism to provide a broad, nontechnical picture of its whole biology, including its evolution, sociobiology, ecology, behavior, and development. The Social Amoebae draws the big lessons from decades of research, and shows how slime molds fit into and illuminate biology as a whole. Slime molds are very different from other organisms; they feed as individual amoebae before coming together to form a multicellular organism that has a remarkable ability to move and orient itself in its environment. Furthermore, these social amoebae display a sophisticated division of labor; within each organism, some cells form the stalk and others become the spores that will seed the next generation. In The Social Amoebae, Bonner examines all these parts together, giving a balanced, concise, and clear overview of slime mold biology, from molecules to cells to multicells, as he advances some unconventional and unexpected insights.

Download or read book Cellular Slime Molds written by John Tyler Bonner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Bonner has rewritten more than half of this standard treatise to take account of the great amount of recent research on the cellular slime molds. He has included a larger selection of material, more figures and new plates. The bibliography has been greatly enlarged. Originally published in 1967. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Stuff You Should Know written by Josh Clark and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the duo behind the massively successful and award-winning podcast Stuff You Should Know comes an unexpected look at things you thought you knew. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant started the podcast Stuff You Should Know back in 2008 because they were curious—curious about the world around them, curious about what they might have missed in their formal educations, and curious to dig deeper on stuff they thought they understood. As it turns out, they aren't the only curious ones. They've since amassed a rabid fan base, making Stuff You Should Know one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Armed with their inquisitive natures and a passion for sharing, they uncover the weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics. The pair have now taken their near-boundless "whys" and "hows" from your earbuds to the pages of a book for the first time—featuring a completely new array of subjects that they’ve long wondered about and wanted to explore. Each chapter is further embellished with snappy visual material to allow for rabbit-hole tangents and digressions—including charts, illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. Follow along as the two dig into the underlying stories of everything from the origin of Murphy beds, to the history of facial hair, to the psychology of being lost. Have you ever wondered about the world around you, and wished to see the magic in everyday things? Come get curious with Stuff You Should Know. With Josh and Chuck as your guide, there’s something interesting about everything (...except maybe jackhammers).

Download or read book Reaction Diffusion Computers written by Andrew Adamatzky and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2005-10-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book introduces a hot topic of novel and emerging computing paradigms and architectures -computation by travelling waves in reaction-diffusion media. A reaction-diffusion computer is a massively parallel computing device, where the micro-volumes of the chemical medium act as elementary few-bit processors, and chemical species diffuse and react in parallel. In the reaction-diffusion computer both the data and the results of the computation are encoded as concentration profiles of the reagents, or local disturbances of concentrations, whilst the computation per se is performed via the spreading and interaction of waves caused by the local disturbances. The monograph brings together results of a decade-long study into designing experimental and simulated prototypes of reaction-diffusion computing devices for image processing, path planning, robot navigation, computational geometry, logics and artificial intelligence. The book is unique because it gives a comprehensive presentation of the theoretical and experimental foundations, and cutting-edge computation techniques, chemical laboratory experimental setups and hardware implementation technology employed in the development of novel nature-inspired computing devices. Key Features: - Non-classical and fresh approach to theory of computation. - In depth exploration of novel and emerging paradigms of nature-inspired computing. - Simple to understand cellular-automata models will help readers/students to design their own computational experiments to advance ideas and concepts described in the book . - Detailed description of receipts and experimental setups of chemical laboratory reaction-diffusion processors will make the book an invaluable resource in practical studies of non-classical and nature-inspired computing architectures . - Step by step explanations of VLSI reaction-diffusion circuits will help students to design their own types of wave-based processors. Key Features: - Non-classical and fresh approach to theory of computation. - In depth exploration of novel and emerging paradigms of nature-inspired computing. - Simple to understand cellular-automata models will help readers/students to design their own computational experiments to advance ideas and concepts described in the book . - Detailed description of receipts and experimental setups of chemical laboratory reaction-diffusion processors will make the book an invaluable resource in practical studies of non-classical and nature-inspired computing architectures . - Step by step explanations of VLSI reaction-diffusion circuits will help students to design their own types of wave-based processors.

Download or read book Bioevaluation of World Transport Networks written by Andrew Adamatzky and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a monstrous single cell well known for its task-solving abilities — solves computational geometry and logical problems, navigates robots and generates music. The slime mould could also build motorways, highways and expressways. It is used to analyse transport networks of Africa, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Iberia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, UK and USA. The largest cities are represented by oat flakes and the slime mould is inoculated in a capital. When all oat flakes are covered by the slime mould, the structure of the protoplasmic networks formed are analyzed. In the laboratory experiments and theoretical analyses, intriguing country-specific properties of the motorway networks are uncovered and compared with the man-made and slime mould networks. They are studied as proximity graphs, leading to hierarchies of complexity and bio-rationality of the motorways. The book will inspire novel and original thoughts, paradigms and approaches for re-evaluation of historical findings on the emergence of ancient roads and will help to design future transcontinental pathways. The book is self-contained and does not require any special training or knowledge. This lavishly illustrated text will be appreciated by readers from all walks of life. The Wisdom of Slime - New York Times (121 KB) Contents:Introduction (Andrew Adamatzky)Methods: How We Conducted Experiments and Analysed Their Results (Andrew Adamatzky)Trans-African Highways (Andrew Adamatzky and Anne Kayem)Tracing Historical Development of Australian Highways (Andrew Adamatzky and Mikhail Prokopenko)Belgian Transport Networks: Redundancy and Dissolution (Andrew Adamatzky, Bernard De Baets and Wesley Van Dessel)Brazilian Highways from Slime Mould's Point of View (Andrew Adamatzky and Pedro P B De Oliveira)Trans-Canada Slimeways: From Coast to Coast to Coast (Andrew Adamatzky and Selim G Akl)Slime Mould Imitates Highways in China (Andrew Adamatzky, Xin-She Yang and Yu-Xin Zhao)Schlauschleimer auf Autobahnen: The Case of Germany (Andrew Adamatzky and Theresa Schubert)Vie Physarale: Roman Roads With Slime Mould (Emanuele Strano, Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones)Malaysian Expressways: Is There a Logic Behind Them? (Andrew Adamatzky, Zuwairie Ibrahim, Amar Faiz Zainal Abidin and Badaruddin Muhammad)Physarum Narcotráficum: Mexican Highways and Slime Mould (Andrew Adamatzky, Genaro J Martinez, Sergio V Chapa-Vergara, René Asomoza-Palacio and Christopher R Stephens)Physarum in The Netherlands: Responding to the Flood (Andrew Adamatzky, Michael Lees and Peter M A Sloot)Rebuilding Iberian Motorways with Slime Mould (Andrew Adamatzky and Ramon Alonso-Sanz)United Kingdom Road Planning with Slime Mould (Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones)Slimy Interstates in the USA (Andrew Adamatzky and Andrew Ilachinski) World Colonisation and Trade Route Formation (Andrew Adamatzky)Biorationality of Motorways (Andrew Adamatzky, Selim Akl, Ramon Alonso-Sanz, Wesley van Dessel, Zuwairie Ibrahim, Andrew Ilachinski, Jeff Jones, Anne V D M Kayem, Genaro J Martínez, Pedro P B de Oliveira, Mikhail Prokopenko, Theresa Schubert, Peter Sloot, Emanuele Strano and Xin-She Yang) Readership: Computer scientists, road planners, mathematicians, physicists, chemists and nonlinear scientists. Keywords:Unconventional Computing;Motorways;Slime Mould;Bionics;CyberneticsKey Features:Unique representation of current state-of-the-art in unconventional and nature-inspired computing; comprehensive and self-contained overviews of advanced prototypes of biologically inspired computing devices and road formations and evolutionStrong topical appeal to general audience; all theoretical topics being self-contained and requiring minimal knowledge in computer scienceAttractive handbook for bio-inspired computing, robotics, computer science and engineering laboratory studies, and self-learning

Download or read book Collision Based Computing written by Andrew Adamatzky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002-05-13 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collision-Based Computing presents a unique overview of computation with mobile self-localized patterns in non-linear media, including computation in optical media, mathematical models of massively parallel computers, and molecular systems. It covers such diverse subjects as conservative computation in billiard ball models and its cellular-automaton analogues, implementation of computing devices in lattice gases, Conway's Game of Life and discrete excitable media, theory of particle machines, computation with solitons, logic of ballistic computing, phenomenology of computation, and self-replicating universal computers. Collision-Based Computing will be of interest to researchers working on relevant topics in Computing Science, Mathematical Physics and Engineering. It will also be useful background reading for postgraduate courses such as Optical Computing, Nature-Inspired Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Smart Engineering Systems, Complex and Adaptive Systems, Parallel Computation, Applied Mathematics and Computational Physics.

Download or read book Slime Mould in Arts and Architecture written by Andrew Adamatzky and published by Biomedical Engineering. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a set of unique chapters written by leading artists, architects and scientists, which resulted from creative translations of the slime mould behaviour into forms and sounds, unconventional investigations and sensorial experiences and the slime mould ability to remove boundaries between living and artificial, solid & fluid, science & arts

Download or read book The Creeping Garden written by Jasper Sharp and published by Alchimia. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly-illustrated companion to the feature documentary The Creeping Garden is a layperson's entry point into the strangely fascinating world of myxomycetes, or plasmodial slime moulds. Neither animal, plant nor fungi, these alien-looking single-celled organisms are all around us in the natural world, shifting in form throughout distinct phases in their life cycle, for the most part invisible to the naked eye, but strangely beautiful in their foraging or reproductive stages. They creep around forests and grasslands across the globe almost imperceptibly, with an agency all of their own that some have described as intelligent. Overlooked for years by natural historians and the general public at large, only recently have small groups of scientists, artists and visionaries begun to find within their intriguing behavioural patterns extraordinary metaphors that seem to belong to the world of science fiction, inspiring practical applications such as powerful computing devices, transport network designs, robot controllers and even music... The Creeping Garden takes a closer look at this mysterious life form and the diverse and curious array of research it has inspired. Providing an insight into the modus operandi of the film's makers and the perceptual world of the organism, it brings the reader into a unique and irrational encounter in which time and space are magnified and intelligence redefined.

Download or read book Fungi and their Role in Sustainable Development Current Perspectives written by Praveen Gehlot and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-09 with total page 779 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illustrates the multiple roles of fungi in everyday life. Fungi are the large group of organisms with tremendous diversity and economic importance. Their ability to produce commercially efficient useful products makes them the vulnerable sustainable tool for the future generation. This book describes a systems approach and provides a means to share the latest developments and advances about the benefits of fungi including their wide application, traditional uses, modern practices, along with designing of strategies to harness their potential. The chapters are organized with data, providing information related to different sustainable aspects of fungi in agriculture, its cultivation and conservation strategies, industrial and environmental utilization, advanced bioconversion technologies and modern biotechnological interventions. Updated information and current opinion related to its application for sustainable agriculture, environment, and industries as futuristic tools have been presented and discussed in different chapters. The book also elucidates a comprehensive yet a representative description of the challenges associated with the sustained application of fungi to achieve the goals of sustainability.