Slime mold and cellular networks

[Kay Brinkmann]

Hi everyone, 

I developed a fascination for physarum polycephalum since I first heard about it a couple of years back and I'm super glad, I found this forum!

At the moment I am working on a project in which we want to try to apply the networking problem solving capabilities of physarum to the expansion of cellular networks. I've read the publication about the tokyo rail system experiments and the resulting algorithm by Toshiyuki Nakagaki et al. and there is a remark in this direction in the last paragraph. 

Since I'm a graphic designer and as such totally out of my depth both concerning the biological and also the telecommunication engineering side of this experiment, I was wondering if there's an expert on physarum here that would be up to answering my (mostly dumb) questions about the organism and it's capabilities and would like to collaborate on this project. 

[ian]

Hi 

They're not difficult to work with but they can be contrary and stubborn - doing duplicate experiments is the key. 

They have to be hungry to work - fed slime stays put and you can reinforce patterns by adding more food to the nodes so the veins thicken up. 

The best thing to do is just play with them - get a few on the go and keep them as pets, you'll soon get a feel for them.