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posted by n1 on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the mr-betteridge-is-your-computer-made-of-slime? dept.

janrinok writes:

Elsevier have published a report based on research work carried out jointly by British and German universities. The report claims:

A future computer might be a lot slimier than the solid silicon devices we have today. In a study published in the journal Materials Today, European researchers reveal details of logic units built using living slime molds, which might act as the building blocks for computing devices and sensors.

Andrew Adamatzky (University of the West of England, Bristol, UK) and Theresa Schubert (Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany) have constructed logical circuits that exploit networks of interconnected slime mold tubes to process information. One is more likely to find the slime mold Physarum polycephalum living somewhere dark and damp rather than in a computer science lab. In its "plasmodium" or vegetative state, the organism spans its environment with a network of tubes that absorb nutrients. The tubes also allow the organism to respond to light and changing environmental conditions that trigger the release of reproductive spores.

In earlier work, the team demonstrated that such a tube network could absorb and transport different colored dyes. They then fed it edible nutrients oat flakes to attract tube growth and common salt to repel them, so that they could grow a network with a particular structure. They then demonstrated how this system could mix two dyes to make a third color as an "output".

Using the dyes with magnetic nanoparticles and tiny fluorescent beads, allowed them to use the slime mold network as a biological "lab-on-a-chip" device. This represents a new way to build microfluidic devices for processing environmental or medical samples on the very small scale for testing and diagnostics, the work suggests. The extension to a much larger network of slime mold tubes could process nanoparticles and carry out sophisticated Boolean logic operations of the kind used by computer circuitry. The team has so far demonstrated that a slime mold network can carry out XOR or NOR Boolean operations. Chaining together arrays of such logic gates might allow a slime mold computer to carry out binary operations for computation.

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  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:32AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:32AM (#22826)

    Now we need another mod for Minecraft.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Tork on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:59AM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:59AM (#22829)
    I was there when they started fooling around with this stuff. They made a toaster dance!
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Saturday March 29 2014, @07:19AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday March 29 2014, @07:19AM (#22845) Journal

    Yes! Finally! The lower levels prove their cred on the higher level! I mean, if slime mold can produce circuits, what are hardware engineers? Opps, did I say that out loud?

    (But actually, I class this with all the recent "medical conditions that could be caused by women named Jennifer". If I had Lyme disease, I would be pissed. Let us not devolve to the level of CNN, and bring in Psychics to explain, well, everything. Oh crap, no more, resistance is futile, we cannot tell the difference between causality and random bullshit. Yet, the earth is only 30 seconds old.

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:51PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:51PM (#22911)

      What are you on, and can I have some?

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday April 07 2014, @04:10AM

        by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 07 2014, @04:10AM (#27289) Journal

        He was dropping some Frustration, it's very potent stuff. I do as well from time to time so to me his post made perfect sense of the +5 Insightful kind :)

        Some time after dropping Frustration one generally gets quite a bit easier to understand and follow, as an example you can take a look at his +4 Insightful comment further down on this page written an hour later.

        --
        Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2014, @07:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2014, @07:47AM (#22846)

    A logic gate with a propagation time measured in minutes.

    -- gewg_

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday March 29 2014, @08:15AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday March 29 2014, @08:15AM (#22849) Journal

    I was amazed that I was actually able to access the article without paying some outrageous paywall toll. But still, anyone who is a scientist, or even a intellectual, will boycott Elsevier because of their unethical conduct. Ethics counts in science. Shame. Elsevirer.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2014, @09:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2014, @09:17AM (#22854)

    Andrew Adamatzky (University of the West of England, Bristol, UK) and Theresa Schubert (Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany) have constructed logical circuits that exploit networks of interconnected slime mold tubes to process information. One is more likely to find the slime mold Physarum polycephalum living somewhere dark and damp rather than in a computer science lab. In its "plasmodium" or vegetative state, the organism spans its environment with a network of tubes that absorb nutrients. The tubes also allow the organism to respond to light and changing environmental conditions that trigger the release of reproductive spores.

    Is this where the "blob" in the movie "The Blob" really came from.

    I for one welcome my slimy overlord/overlords?..?