311 research outputs found

    Structural machines and slime mould computation

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    © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. A Physarum machine is a programmable amorphous biological computer experimentally implemented in the vegetative state of true slime mould Physarum polycephalum. It comprises an amorphous yellowish mass with networks of protoplasmic veins, programmed by spatial configurations of attracting and repelling gradients. The goal of this paper to advance formalism of Physarum machines providing theoretical tools for exploration of possibilities of these machines and extension of their applications. To achieve this goal, we introduce structural machines and study their properties

    Evolving Gene Regulatory Networks with Mobile DNA Mechanisms

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    This paper uses a recently presented abstract, tuneable Boolean regulatory network model extended to consider aspects of mobile DNA, such as transposons. The significant role of mobile DNA in the evolution of natural systems is becoming increasingly clear. This paper shows how dynamically controlling network node connectivity and function via transposon-inspired mechanisms can be selected for in computational intelligence tasks to give improved performance. The designs of dynamical networks intended for implementation within the slime mould Physarum polycephalum and for the distributed control of a smart surface are considered.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1303.722

    Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition

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    © 2018 Elsevier B.V. The slime mould Physarum polycephalum has been used in developing unconventional computing devices for in which the slime mould played a role of a sensing, actuating, and computing device. These devices treated the slime mould as an active living substrate, yet it is a self-consistent living creature which evolved over millions of years and occupied most parts of the world, but in any case, that living entity did not own true cognition, just automated biochemical mechanisms. To “rehabilitate” slime mould from the rank of a purely living electronics element to a “creature of thoughts” we are analyzing the cognitive potential of P. polycephalum. We base our theory of minimal cognition of the slime mould on a bottom-up approach, from the biological and biophysical nature of the slime mould and its regulatory systems using frameworks such as Lyon's biogenic cognition, Muller, di Primio-Lengelerś modifiable pathways, Bateson's “patterns that connect” framework, Maturana's autopoietic network, or proto-consciousness and Morgan's Canon

    Slime mould memristors

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    In laboratory experiments we demonstrate that protoplasmic tubes of acellular slime mould \emph{Physarum polycephalum} show current versus voltage profiles consistent with memristive systems and that the effect is due to the living protoplasm of the mould. This complements previous findings on memristive properties of other living systems (human skin and blood) and contributes to development of self-growing bio-electronic circuits. Distinctive asymmetric V-I curves which were occasionally observed when the internal current is on the same order as the driven current, are well-modelled by the concept of active memristors
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