Atsushi Tero

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Atsushi Tero is a researcher, biologist, and associate professor of applied mathematics at Kyushu University. He is known for his research of slime molds, their ability to solve mazes and their practical uses. [1]

Contents

Research

Atsushi Tero has led research on slime molds, specifically Physarum polycephalum. With Toshiyuki Nakagaki and other researchers, he researched slime molds and their ability to solve mazes and even memorize mazes. It was proposed as a solution to the Steiner tree problem as the shortest way to connect two points. This affects biology and philosophy because a brainless organism seemed to be making decisions to solve the maze. Additionally, the researchers were able to deduce that these slime molds respond to environmental changes. [2] [3]

In 2009, he used slime molds to simulate Tokyo’s railway system. The study shows that the slime molds may have found a more efficient path than the path that is used. [4] [5] [6]

The Ig Nobel Prize

Atsushi Tero won the Ig Nobel Prize along with Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Akio Ishiguro, and Ágota Tóth in Cognitive Science in 2008. They received this prize with the discovery of slime molds being able to solve mazes. [7]

Atsushi Tero won the Ig Nobel Prize with Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi, Dan Bebber, and Mark Fricker in Transportation Planning in 2010. They received this prize for using slime molds to depict Tokyo’s railway system in possibly a more efficient way. [8]

He is one of nine people to have won multiple Ig Nobel Prizes.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slime mold</span> Spore-forming organisms

Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to a polyphyletic assemblage of unrelated eukaryotic organisms in the Stramenopiles, Rhizaria, Discoba, Amoebozoa and Holomycota clades. Most are microscopic; those in the Myxogastria form larger plasmodial slime molds visible to the naked eye. The slime mold life cycle includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic multicellular or multinucleate fruiting bodies that may be formed through aggregation or fusion; aggregation is driven by chemical signals called acrasins. Slime molds contribute to the decomposition of dead vegetation; some are parasitic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mold</span> Wooly, dust-like fungal structure or substance

A mold or mould is one of the structures that certain fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of spores containing fungal secondary metabolites. The spores are the dispersal units of the fungi. Not all fungi form molds. Some fungi form mushrooms; others grow as single cells and are called microfungi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mycetozoa</span> Infraphylum of protists

Mycetozoa is a polyphyletic grouping of slime molds. It was originally thought to be a monophyletic clade, but recently it was discovered that protostelia are a polyphyletic group within Conosa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyushu University</span> University in Fukuoka, Japan

Kyushu University, abbreviated to Kyudai, is a public research university located in Fukuoka, Japan, on the island of Kyushu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Osaka University</span> Public university in Osaka, Japan

Osaka University, abbreviated as OU or Handai (阪大), is a national research university in Osaka, Japan. The university traces its roots back to Edo-era institutions Tekijuku (1838) and Kaitokudo (1724), and was officially established in 1931 as the sixth of the Imperial Universities in Japan, with two faculties: science and medicine. Following the post-war educational reform, it merged with three pre-war higher schools, reorganizing as a comprehensive university with five faculties: science, medicine, letters, law and economics, and engineering. After the merger with Osaka University of Foreign Studies in 2007, Osaka University became the largest national university in Japan by undergraduate enrollment.

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<i>Physarum polycephalum</i> Species of slime mold, model organism

Physarum polycephalum, an acellular slime mold or myxomycete popularly known as "the blob", is a protist with diverse cellular forms and broad geographic distribution. The “acellular” moniker derives from the plasmodial stage of the life cycle: the plasmodium is a bright yellow macroscopic multinucleate coenocyte shaped in a network of interlaced tubes. This stage of the life cycle, along with its preference for damp shady habitats, likely contributed to the original mischaracterization of the organism as a fungus. P. polycephalum is used as a model organism for research into motility, cellular differentiation, chemotaxis, cellular compatibility, and the cell cycle.

John Tyler Bonner was an American biologist who was a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He was a pioneer in the use of cellular slime molds to understand evolution and development over a career of 40 years and was one of the world's leading experts on cellular slime moulds. Arizona State University says that the establishment and growth of developmental-evolutionary biology owes a great debt to the work of Bonner's studies. His work is highly readable and unusually clearly written and his contributions have made many complicated ideas of biology accessible to a wide audience.

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Toshiyuki Nakagaki is a Japanese professor, biologist, ethologist at the Research Institute of Electronic Science (RIES). He is famous for leading experiments relating to slime mold, specifically its ability to solve mazes as a lifeform without a brain.

References

  1. "Kyushu University, Atsushi Tero profile". kyushu-u.elsevierpure.com.
  2. Tsang, Jennifer (July 24, 2017). "How Slime Molds Affect Philosophy". www.mbl.edu.
  3. Starr, Michael (November 6, 2022). "Slime Molds Redefine Intelligence". www.sciencealert.com.
  4. Metcalfe, John (July 23, 2012). "Mapping Tokyo's Railway Using Slime Molds". www.bloomberg.com.
  5. Yong, Ed (2010-09-08). "Let slime moulds do the thinking!". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  6. "Better transit design through ... slime mold?". NBC News. 2010-01-21. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  7. Masatoshi, Shimizu (March 24, 2017). "Maze-Solving Slime Mold Ig Nobel Prize". www.nippon.com.
  8. Wilton, Pete (Oct 1, 2010). "Slime Mold Transportation Ig Nobel Prize". www.ox.ac.uk.