Description
Book SynopsisSlime mould Physarum polycephalum is a monstrous single cell well known for its task-solving abilities — solves computational geometry and logical problems, navigates robots and generates music.The slime mould could also build motorways, highways and expressways. It is used to analyse transport networks of Africa, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Iberia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, UK and USA. The largest cities are represented by oat flakes and the slime mould is inoculated in a capital. When all oat flakes are covered by the slime mould, the structure of the protoplasmic networks formed are analyzed. In the laboratory experiments and theoretical analyses, intriguing country-specific properties of the motorway networks are uncovered and compared with the man-made and slime mould networks. They are studied as proximity graphs, leading to hierarchies of complexity and bio-rationality of the motorways.The book will inspire novel and original thoughts, paradigms and approaches for re-evaluation of historical findings on the emergence of ancient roads and will help to design future transcontinental pathways. The book is self-contained and does not require any special training or knowledge. This lavishly illustrated text will be appreciated by readers from all walks of life.
Table of ContentsIntroduction (Andrew Adamatzky); Methods: How We Made Experiments and Analysed Their Results (Andrew Adamatzky); Trans-African Highways (Andrew Adamatzky and Anne Kayem); Tracing Historical Development of Australian Highways (Andrew Adamatzky and Mikhail Prokopenko); Belgian Transport Networks: Redundancy and Dissolution (Andrew Adamatzky, Bernard De Baets and Wesley Van Dessel); Brazilian Highways from Slime Mould's Point of View (Andrew Adamatzky and Pedro P B De Oliveira); Trans-Canada Slimeways: From Coast to Coast to Coast (Andrew Adamatzky and Selim G Akl); Slime Mould Imitates Highways in China (Andrew Adamatzky, Xin-She Yang and Yu-Xin Zhao); Schlauschleimer auf Autobahnen: The Case of Germany (Andrew Adamatzky and Theresa Schubert); Vie Physarale: Roman Roads With Slime Mould (Emanuele Strano, Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones); Malaysian Expressways: Is There a Logic Behind? (Andrew Adamatzky, Zuwairie Ibrahim, Amar Faiz Zainal Abidin and Badaruddin Muhammad); Physarum Narcotraficum: Mexican Highways and Slime Mould (Andrew Adamatzky, Genaro J Martinez, Sergio V Chapa-Vergara, Rene Asomoza-Palacio and Christopher R Stephens); Physarum in the Netherlands: Responding to the Flood (Andrew Adamatzky, Michael Lees and Peter M A Sloot); Rebuilding Iberian Motorways with Slime Mould (Andrew Adamatzky and Ramon Alonso-Sanz); United Kingdom Road Planning with Slime Mould (Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones); Slimy Interstates in the USA (Andrew Adamatzky and Andrew Ilachinski); The World's Colonisation and Trade Routes Formation (Andrew Adamatzky); Bio-Rationality of Motorways (Andrew Adamatzky, Selim Akl, Ramon Alonso-Sanz, Wesley van Dessel, Zuwairie Ibrahim, Andrew Ilachinski, Jeff Jones, Anne V D M Kayem, Genaro J Martinez, Pedro de Oliveira, Mikhail Prokopenko, Theresa Schubert, Peter Sloot, Emanuele Strano and Xin-She Yang).
