3 ms·
The original paper seems to be at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202008161 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202008161. I only
by incompatible 5y ago
The original paper seems to be at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202008161 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202008161.
I only glanced at it, but noticed that they hypothesized that the organism uses mechanosensation involving rhythmic pulling on the substrate and interpretation of changes in things like tension, compression or mechanical strain.
- adrian_b 5y agoFree access to the (preprint) paper appears to be at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340090261_Mechanosensation_Mediates_Long-Range_Spatial_Decision-Making_in_an_Aneural_Organism https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340090261_Mechanose...
- mcculley 5y agoIs there any reason one should not just go to Sci-Hub when hitting a paywall?
- na85 5y agoI think Alexandra has temporarily stopped adding new papers, hasn't she?
- dredmorbius 5y agoShe's resumed updating Sci-Hub: Today is Sci-Hub anniversary the project is 10 years old! I'm going to publish 2,337,229 new articles to celebrate the date. They will be available on the website in a few hours (how about the lawsuit in India you may ask: our lawyers say that restriction is expired already) https://nitter.kavin.rocks/ringo_ring/status/1434356217208623106#m https://nitter.kavin.rocks/ringo_ring/status/143435621720862...
- mcculley 5y agoI found this one on Sci-Hub by plugging in the DOI before I saw the comment above.
- bryan0 5y agoOk this is their theory for how it senses: > Physarum is widely known to grow in a pulsatile manner, which consists of a forward growth phase and a reverse streaming phase during which the cytoplasm is retracted away from the growth regions (Figure 8A). We have observed that this oscillation is critical for Physarum mechanosensation and that interrupting it by changing the substrate stiffness (Figure 4) or interfering with the oscillations (Figure 6) prevents accurate decision making. Thus, we propose a theoretical model of Physarum navigation where this oscillatory behavior acts as a sample-and- integrate function (Figure 8B): the growth regions sample the environment during the growth phase, optimize the direction of the network tubes during the reverse streaming phase by inducing internal tension in the Physarum network which then aligns future growth of the growth regions. So basically the slime mold pulls back on the substrate and feels for strain gradients.
- incompatible 5y agoThe organism didn't evolve to live in a petri dish. I wonder how it uses this ability in the wild.