It isn't easy being a loner—someone who resists the pull of the crowd, who marches to their own drummer.
Plants & Animals
Mar 19, 2020
15
9024
A computational approach inspired by the growth patterns of a bright yellow slime mold has enabled a team of astronomers and computer scientists at UC Santa Cruz to trace the filaments of the cosmic web that connects galaxies ...
Astronomy
Mar 10, 2020
49
3007
Nature has provided a great deal of inspiration for computer scientists developing search algorithms and ways to solve complicated problems with as little computing power as possible. Ant colonies, beehives, bat hunting, ...
Mathematics
Feb 27, 2020
0
7
A slime Santa beard has been made by Ian Hands-Portman at the University of Warwick using slime molds, a myxomycete which is a single giant cell with multiple nuclei that lives in dark damp places and likes to feed off bacteria ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 17, 2019
0
4
Slime has been present on Earth for a very long time—almost 2 billion years, according to a recent reassessment of fossil evidence.
Paleontology & Fossils
Oct 10, 2019
1
100
Nature has a way of finding optimal solutions to complex problems. For example, despite the billions of ways for a single protein to fold, proteins always fold in a way that minimizes potential energy. Slime mold, a brainless ...
General Physics
Jun 26, 2019
0
1
Physarum polycephalum, which literally means "many-headed slime," is a slime mold that inhabits damp and dark habitats, such as decaying wood. Thanks to its ability to respond to stimuli such as light, chemicals and vibrations, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 7, 2019
0
6
Researchers in Japan think they have found an answer to the fundamental biological question of how individual cells know which way to position themselves within a complex, multicellular body. Depending on a cell's purpose ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 21, 2019
0
28
Researchers at Osaka University show how the mutual inhibition of two molecules results in their localization at opposite ends of cells, acting as a trigger for the formation of appendages at one cell end that makes directional ...
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 8, 2018
0
3
Every year, the world loses an estimated 7 percent of its seagrasses. While the reasons are manifold, one culprit has long confounded scientists: eelgrass wasting disease. This September a team of biologists is zeroing in ...
Ecology
Sep 17, 2018
0
28
