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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)
Seven farms across the country are sporting NASA-themed corn mazes this year, as part of NASA’s Space Farm 7 project. It’s an educational project, as these farms host fall festivals open to the public, and a celebration of NASA’s achievements over the past 50 years. You can even vote on your favorite maze, and be entered to win lunch with an astronaut. The maze shown is at Dewberry Farm in Brookshire, Texas. See them all at Universe Today. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: The MAIZE Inc.)
Maze Cafe Cup and Saucer | $14.95
What a neat saucer to put under a coffee cup! It looks like an everyday cup and saucer, but just a drop of coffee on the saucer becomes a game as the drip finds it ways through the maze of grooves. The Maze Cafe Cup and Saucer was designed by artist Erdem Selek and is available now in the NeatoShop. Get your morning coffee and your morning puzzle at the same time! And be sure to check out the many other clever cups and mugs from the NeatoShop!
Start your a-maze-ing day right with the Maze Cafe ($14.95). This clever cup and saucer set from the NeatoShop is designed by Turkish designer Erdem Selek. It features a molded maze pattern on the saucer that you can play with a drop of coffee.
It’s the perfect Father’s Day gift for your coffee- and puzzle-lovin’ dad: Link
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Ever been lost in an IKEA store? It’s not your fault – turns out the store was actually designed like a maze. Why? Elementary, my dear Watson: it’s so you shop more!
The home furnishing chain’s mazy layouts are a psychological weapon to part shoppers from their cash, an expert in store design claims. The theory is that while following a zig-zag trail between displays of minimalist Swedish furniture, a disorientated Ikea customer feels compelled to pick up a few extra impulse purchases.
According to Alan Penn, director of the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment at University College London, Ikea’s strategy is similar to that of out-of-town retail parks – keep customers inside for as long as they can.
‘In Ikea’s case, you have to follow a set path past what is effectively their catalogue in physical form, with furniture placed in different settings which is meant to show you how adaptable it is,’ he said. ‘By the time you get to the warehouse where you can actually buy the stool or whatever’s caught your eye, you’re so impressed by how cheap it is that you end up getting it.’
It might take a genius to find the way through this maze! Print out a full size copy at the link and give it your best shot. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Who can negotiate a maze faster, a human or a rat? Another round of lunacy from Tom Scott. -via b3ta
Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci, the man who published some of the world’s most fantastical works and luxurious volumes has created its biggest maze. His labyrinth of bamboo hedges at Fontanellato near Parma reportedly covers some seven hectares (17.5 acres), which would make it more than five times larger than the Pineapple Garden Maze on Hawaii, the largest permanent hedge maze in the Guinness Book of Records.
The maze is scheduled to open to the public in 2012. Bring a cell phone with you if you go, just in case you get lost.
Large mazes or labyrinths served different purposees at different times inhistory, but they are always fun! In the 16th century, garden mazes were features of many noble gardens. They enabled people to mix socially, to get some exercise, to have fun, and to participate in nature! Mazes have been built for other reasons as well.
In 1950 Canon Harry Cheales, parish priest of Wyck Rissington, a small village in the south of England, had a curious dream. In it, he was looking out of window of the rectory while below him, in the garden, he could see people walking around a maze. A shadowy figure behind him was describing the scene.
The dream was so vivid that, on walking, the rector felt compelled to build a real-life version of the maze he had seen. The newly constructed maze was modeled on a set of religious carvings in the village church and the design was symbolic. The winding pathways represented the journey of life. The wrong turnings and culs-de-sac symbolized the sins that people commit before death, obstacles on the way to paradise and heaven.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by MrGhaz.
Physical chemists at Northwestern University have demonstrated that a simple droplet of oil can navigate a complex labyrinth.
Grzybowski’s team made a number of silicon mazes roughly 6.5 square centimeters in size. To create the conditions for movement, the researchers filled the labyrinths with an alkaline solution of potassium hydroxide. The maze runners, placed at the entrance of the labyrinths, were millimeter-wide droplets of either mineral oil or the organic solvent dichloromethane, both loaded with a weak acid and red dye. The “prize,” placed at the exit of each maze, was a lump of agarose gel soaked in hydrochloric acid. “We wanted to give [the droplets] a bit of a challenge and see if they could do more than just go in a straight line,” Grzybowski says.
Over the course of a minute or so, each droplet found its way to the end of the maze.
The mechanism is explained at the link. The left diagram above shows that a droplet chose the shortest route from the entry to the dashed box where the “prize” was placed. The droplet on the right went astray twice but corrrected itself en route.
Istvan Lagzi, Bartosz Grzybowski, et al., JACS
Pulled along. Watch a droplet navigate a silicon maze.
The observation potentially has more than curiosity value; the researchers suggest that the basic principles involved may be applicable to the delivery of antineoplastic chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells.
Link.
Or maybe it’s just hard for me – I have perpetually shaky hands (it takes me two hands to play Boom Blox on the Wii) so I only got about halfway through before biffing it. Your job is to guide the little red dot through the maze without touching the walls, but it’s not as easy as all that. There are moving parts and twists and turns that make this pretty challenging! And if, unlike me, this maze is way too simple for you, there’s a link at the bottom of the page for version two, which looks darn near impossible.
