More devastating information for creationism. We have all heard Iama poo pooing the "goo" of the natural world, asserting it can never amount to much. How wrong she is! Once again for the upteenth time. Actually it's just a continuation of the pattern characteristic of all creation science... totally wrong on the evidence. 

What we have here is another clear excellent example of "Non-Intelligent Design." LOL

Excerpts from: The Wisdom of Slime By Andrew Adamatzky and Andrew Ilachinski

THE United States interstate highway system is often celebrated as a simple yet highly efficient transportation scheme … .

But it’s worth remembering that the highway system was created by mere humans, using only human intelligence. To find out if it’s optimally designed, we need to consult a higher authority. Namely, slime mold.

There is a slime mold known as Physarum polycephalum that lives in forests around the world. An interesting fact about this slime mold is that it is highly intelligent — or at least it behaves as if it is. In locating food in its environment, it builds networks that have been shown to be optimally efficient in transporting the nutrients over the area in question.

The Japanese researcher Toshiyuki Nakagaki and his colleagues have demonstrated that the slime mold’s foraging behavior can be used to perform sophisticated computations, as long as the problems are represented spatially. Problems solved by the slime mold include not only the shortest path out of a maze, but also other complex mathematical challenges (like creating a Voronoi diagram and a Delaunay triangulation).

Despite its ability to solve an array of problems, the slime mold was designed by evolution to solve just one problem: how to build an optimal transport network (for its nutrients). 

… decided to investigate how the slime mold, when presented with the task of connecting the major urban areas of the United States, would design a transport system. Would its design resemble that of the United States highway system, or would the slime mold propose a superior one?

… took a large dish in the shape of the United States and placed rolled oats (a food for the slime mold) in the locations of 20 major urban areas. Then we put the slime mold on the rolled oats representing the New York area. The slime mold propagated out from New York toward the other urban areas and eventually spanned them all with its network of protoplasmic tubes.

What did the resulting network look like? It looked remarkably like the United States interstate highway system.

How Americans feel about that fact depends, presumably, on how they feel about the wisdom of slime.

Andrew Adamatzky is a professor of computer science at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Andrew Ilachinski is the principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunda... 

Or else Goodidit

That's it?   Seriously...you guys are wooping it up over that?

from the artivle...What did the resulting network look like? It looked remarkably like the United States interstate highway system.

I'm sure it did.  Once again evo-minded science at its best.  

...I wonder how they accounted for the change in the road system due to rivers, mountains, deserts...as I said. What a crock....but still watch them mock creation science and beat their chest.

May 15, 2012 -- 10:14AM, 57 wrote:

from the artivle...What did the resulting network look like? It looked remarkably like the United States interstate highway system.

Exactly the point. You say over and over again, no natural organism or process can design anything on its own without a designer. You've been refuted by the slime. Blindsided by the evidence and didn't even know his creationism got taken to the cleaners. LOL 

...I wonder how they accounted for the change in the road system due to rivers, mountains, deserts

Add rivers, mountains and deserts to the environment mix and the natural processes will design the most efficient routings everytime. 

...as I said. What a crock....but still watch them mock creation science and beat their chest.

What's your problem? Clear evidence of a natural system performing a task you have insisted requires a designer. Looks to me like it's the empirical evidence that mocks creation science.

I can see the headlines now: "Slime mocks Creation Science. Death Knell Rings for Creationism." ROTFLMAO