Ig Nobel for slime networks

Science - Pete Wilton | 01 Oct 10. An experiment to test if slime moulds can design efficient railway networks has won a team, including Oxford University researchers, an Ig Nobel Prize . We reported on the original research back in January , but I asked team-member Mark Fricker of Oxford University's Department of Plant Sciences why scientists study these strange organisms, what they can teach us and how they take 'networking' to a whole new level: OxSciBlog: What makes slime moulds so interesting to study? - Mark Fricker: The acellular slime molds represent a very unusual life form. The whole organism is one single giant cell, albeit containing many nuclei, that can grow to be many centimeters in size. In the wild, it spreads as a pulsing network seeking out food sources such as bacteria, fungi or dead insects that it engulfs and then digests. Even with a low power microscope or a hand lens it is possible to watch the shuttle flow of cytoplasm coursing through the system that somehow manages to resolve into an efficient transport network. Although it has no brain or nervous system, its exploratory behaviour and the network itself is highly responsive and continuously adapts to whatever is happening around it. It's a great system to then challenge with different stimuli to see how it reacts. If things get really bad, it simply dries out and waits until things get better or forms spores that can spread to other sites. OSB: Why is it useful to compare their networks with manmade ones?