There Are Many Postdocs In Academia, But Not So Many Permanent Researchers.

Good morning , I can't choose which book to read today

Purple Googly-Eyed Squid May Be Math Genius - Seeker

Seeker

Purple Googly-Eyed Squid May Be Math Genius

The stubby squid is part of a family of marine creatures that have demonstrated math smarts.

Things to remember

Reminder that your notes don't need to look perfect, you just need to be able to learn from them

"So you navigate your life with the help of others who held mirrors up for you. People praised your good qualities and criticised your bad habits, and these perspectives -often surprising to you - helped you to guide your life.

So poorly did you know yourself that you were always surprised at how you looked at the photographs or how you sounded on the voice mail.

In this way, much of your existence took place in the eyes, ears and fingertips of others." - David Eagleman, Sum

not now, im noticing the pattern

Messier 42, The Orion Nebula

Credit: Alejandro López

Slime Molds and Intelligence

Okay, despite going into a biology related field, I only just learned about slime molds, and hang on, because it gets WILD.

This guy in the picture is called Physarum polycephalum, one of the more commonly studied types of slime mold. It was originally thought to be a fungus, though we now know it to actually be a type of protist (a sort of catch-all group for any eukaryotic organism that isn't a plant, animal, or a fungus). As protists go, it's pretty smart. It is very good at finding the most efficient way to get to a food source, or multiple food sources. In fact, placing a slime mold on a map with food sources at all of the major cities can give a pretty good idea of an efficient transportation system. Here is a slime mold growing over a map of Tokyo compared to the actual Tokyo railway system:

Pretty good, right? Though they don't have eyes, ears, or noses, the slime molds are able to sense objects at a distance kind of like a spider using tiny differences in tension and vibrations to sense a fly caught in its web. Instead of a spiderweb, though, this organism relies on proteins called TRP channels. The slime mold can then make decisions about where it wants to grow. In one experiment, a slime mold was put in a petri dish with one glass disk on one side and 3 glass disks on the other side. Even though the disks weren't a food source, the slime mold chose to grow towards and investigate the side with 3 disks over 70% of the time.

Even more impressive is that these organisms have some sense of time. If you blow cold air on them every hour on the hour, they'll start to shrink away in anticipation when before the air hits after only 3 hours.

Now, I hear you say, this is cool and all, but like, I can do all those things too. The slime mold isn't special...

To which I would like to point out that you have a significant advantage over the slime mold, seeing as you have a brain.

Yeah, these protists can accomplish all of the things I just talked about, and they just... don't have any sort of neural architecture whatsoever? They don't even have brain cells, let alone the structures that should allow them to process sensory information and make decisions because of it. Nothing that should give them a sense of time. Scientists literally have no idea how this thing is able to "think'. But however it does, it is sure to be a form of cognition that is completely and utterly different from anything that we're familiar with.

15.9.2024. reorganizing