Treat your ears right. Listen to this track.
Morning Dew on a Spider’s Web.
Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Tualatin, Oregon.
I recently acquired a Canon DSLR after many years of wanting one and now I can finally start taking pics again! I’ve always wanted to take one of these.
Slime Molds: No Brains, No Feet, No Problem
by Rebecca Johnson
In a study released last week, computer scientist Selim Akl of Queens University demonstrated that slime mold is fantastically efficient at finding the quickest route to food. When he placed rolled oats over the country’s population centers and a slime mold culture over Toronto, the organism grew its way across the Canadian map, sprouting tentacles that mimicked the Canadian highway system. It’s an experiment that’s been replicated globally several times now — in Japan, the UK, and the United States — all with a similar outcome.
So what is slime mold, and how does it do this?
Slime mold is not a plant or animal. It’s not a fungus, though it sometimes resembles one. Slime mold, in fact, is a soil-dwelling amoeba, a brainless, single-celled organism, often containing multiple nuclei.
Frederick Spiegel, a biology professor at the University of Arkansas and an expert on slime molds, first encountered them nearly 40 years ago. “I thought they were the most beautiful, sublime things I’d ever seen,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ve got to work with these.’”…
(read more: PBS - NewsHour)
(photos: TL - Hemitrichia serpula, by Jonathan Mays; TR - Arcyria denudata, by Kim Fleming; BL - Fruiting bodies of Cribraria cancellata, by Kim Fleming; BR - tropical species, by Martin Schnittler)
