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I spent a year of college teaching rats to find their way through a maze, and now I find that slime molds, which don’t even have brains, can do the same thing! Professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Japan’s Future University Hakodate studies slime molds, which organize their colonies of cells to move toward a food source, using the most direct route.
“Humans are not the only living things with information-processing abilities,” he said. “Simple creatures can solve certain kinds of difficult puzzles. If you want to spotlight the essence of life or intelligence, it’s easier to use these simple creatures.”
The research in slime mold organization may lead to information-processing breakthroughs, including the possibility of biocomputers. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Flickr user Sentrawoods)
Minnesotastan’s mother was a member of American Airlines 1941 graduating class for the fairly new profession called “stewardess.” She passed along some interesting tidbits about the business in those days, such as how the pilot communicated with the passengers: with handwritten notes! You’ll find some of those notes in a post at TYWKIWDBI. Link
For years scientists have known that each parrot has a unique call that other birds use to address them, but now they’ve discovered that the parents of the species are responsible for naming their chicks. They observed the parent birds using a different call for each chick long before the babies can communicate.
Link Image via TJL23 [Fllickr]
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We all have cell phones (oops, sorry, "smart" phones) but did you ever notice that no one ever calls anymore?
Pamela Paul of The New York Times noticed how modern day communications is now shying away from the telephone:
It’s at the point where when the phone does ring — and it’s not my mom, dad, husband or baby sitter — my first thought is: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” My second thought is: “Isn’t it weird to just call like that? Out of the blue? With no e-mailed warning?”
I don’t think it’s just me. Sure, teenagers gave up the phone call eons ago. But I’m a long way away from my teenage years, back when the key rite of passage was getting a phone in your bedroom or (cue Molly Ringwald gasp) a line of your own.
In the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.
“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.”
“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”
Why doesn’t your husband understand you? A new research found that being too close to another person may actually hamper communications:
The spouses consistently overestimated their ability to communicate, and did so more with their partners than with strangers.
Prof Keysar’s colleague Prof Kenneth Savitsky said: "A wife who says to her husband, ‘it’s getting hot in here,’ as a hint for her husband to turn up the air conditioning a notch, may be surprised when he interprets her statement as a coy, amorous advance instead.
"Some couples may indeed be on the same wavelength, but maybe not as much as they think. You get rushed and preoccupied, and you stop taking the perspective of the other person, precisely because the two of you are so close."
Animals communicate with each other in ways we can’t imagine, but there are a few we’ve figured out. Oh, we can’t translate everything yet, but we know how some do it. Environmental Graffiti looks at five animals that have their own languages. For example, some frogs chatter away in a language we can’t even hear!
The frogs’ calls have to compete with other animals’ loud signals. These calls are perceived as very loud to humans. However, there are frogs that communicate only through ultrasound. Their frequency is too high for the human ear to hear. The Huia cavitympanum species that lives in Borneo is the only species known to man that communicates only through high-pitched sounds.
Comments Off Like to chat and tweet? Try Qvaq. It’s a brand new and very neat web app, made by Robert Birming (a Neatoramanaut and fellow blogger at Geek Alerts) and Martin Lindkvist, that makes discussion and collaborations in real time fun and easy.
With Qvaq, you can discuss your favorite topics with others (either by joining an existing group like the Neatorama group and Guess The Movie or by starting your own). You can add photos and video clips, chat privately or publicly, and so on. None of these are new features – Martin acknowledged that IRC has been around since the 80′s – but what they’ve done is create a smoothly integrated set of functionalities that just flow easily. Qvaq is fun to use
Give it a try – I’ll be at the Neatorama group there off and on today. Come and say hello: Link
The Kenyan honeyguide bird has an unusual and very remarkable behavior: it engages in an interspecies collaboration with humans to locate African bee colonies. In exchange for their guide service, the birds then share the harvest of the recovered honey.
Sir David Attenborough explains in this very interesting BBC clip titled Talking to Strangers.
– via presurfer
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
