What it's like to be in the middle of a conspiracy theory (according to a conspiracy theory expert) It's something of a familiar cycle by now: Tragedy hits; rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories follow. It's often even more acute in the case of a natural disaster, when conspiracy theories about what "really" caused the calamity run right into culture-war-driven climate change denialism. Put together, these theories obscure real causes while elevating fake ones. I've studied these ideas extensively, having spent the last 10 years writing about conspiracy theories and disinformation as a journalist and researcher. I've covered everything from the rise of QAnon to whether Donald Trump faked his assassination attempt. I've written three books, testified to Congress, and even written a report for the January 6th Committee.

Mireta wants to translate slime mold's superpowers into algorithms that might help improve transit times, alleviate congestion, and more. It is a yellow blob with no brain, yet some researchers believe a curious organism known as slime mold could help us build more resilient cities. Humans have been building cities for 6,000 years, but slime mold has been around for 600 million. The team behind a new startup called Mireta wants to translate the organism's biological superpowers into algorithms that might help improve transit times, alleviate congestion, and minimize climate-related disruptions in cities worldwide. Mireta's algorithm mimics how slime mold efficiently distributes resources through branching networks. The startup's founders think this approach could help connect subway stations, design bike lanes, or optimize factory assembly lines. They claim its software can factor in flood zones, traffic patterns, budget constraints, and more.

Upon first glance, the Unconventional Computing Laboratory looks like a regular workspace, with computers and scientific instruments lining its clean, smooth countertops. But if you look closely, the anomalies start appearing. A series of videos shared with PopSci show the weird quirks of this research: On top of the cluttered desks, there are large plastic containers with electrodes sticking out of a foam-like substance, and a massive motherboard with tiny oyster mushrooms growing on top of it. No, this lab isn't trying to recreate scenes from "The Last of Us." The researchers there have been working on stuff like this for awhile: It was founded in 2001 with the belief that the computers of the coming century will be made of chemical or living systems, or wetware, that are going to work in harmony with hardware and software.

There exists a fascinating single-celled organism (Physarum polycephalum), informally referred to as "slime mold" or "the blob" due to its mold-like appearance and growth patterns. After analyzing how this organism intelligently expands, successfully solves mazes and is propelled toward resources throughout its lifecycle, we will then consider our current definition of what it means to be "an intelligent organism", and how this fascinating mold could reshape the requirements for being considered "truly intelligent" by human standards. We will start off by looking at what exactly this mold is and what its core components are. The slime mold has some unique traits such as having an extensive network of tubular extensions called "pseudopods" that can cover several square meters at full size, being able to double its mass every day (if resources allow), avoid potentially toxic areas and completely heal itself if it is sliced in half. Even the way this organism moves is very intriguing: "During locomotion with a speed of 1 cm/h, the size and mesh of tubes evolve depending on the position within the organism. At the frontal part of the plasmodium, small components of the tube are very densely connected and some of the small tubes gradually become thick, while most of them disappear toward the rear" one researcher says.

In Jenna Sutela's work, which ranges from computational poetry to experimental music to installations and performance, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Visiting Artist enlists microbes and neural networks as co-creators. "I want to explore this notion of expanded authorship through bringing in beyond-human life forms," Sutela says. Inspired by science fiction, she employs both nature's oldest technologies -- the slime model Physarum polycephalum that has been compared to a computer -- and the newest ones developed in research labs. Bacteria and artificial intelligence are among her many collaborators in creating artworks that challenge the deeply ingrained idea that humans exist apart from the teeming, vibrating world that contains us. In April, Sutela participated in an Open Systems panel, moderated by Caroline Jones, professor of history theory and criticism, as part of this year's CAST symposium.

The single-celled Physarum polcephalum, or slime mold, does not have a brain or nervous system, but is able to remember the location of a food source, a new study reveals. German scientist sound the bright yellow slime mold records where its last meal was by changing the shape of its tubular tendrils. If it encounters food while weaving around an environment, the mold will keep its specific structure in that area to know where to return to feast. The latest study builds on the'amazing' skills of the yellow mold, which can also solve mazes and perform other tasks that require intelligence. New research suggests P. polycephalum, a bright yellow slime mold with no brain or nervous system, 'remembers' records where a food source is by restructuring the shape of its tubular tendrils.

"There are a number of seagrass monitoring programs that work on regional and to some degree on global scales, but most of them are really only looking at the cover and the abundance of the seagrass itself," said Emmett Duffy, director of the Marine Global Earth Observatories (MarineGEO) headquartered at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The new grant builds on collaborative work by the Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN), led by Duffy, and will look at how climate, biodiversity and other environmental aspects can change the course of the disease. The team is deploying a wide arsenal of weapons to understand it: In addition to marine biologists, they are bringing on geographers, computer scientists, artificial intelligence and drones. Seagrasses are among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth. They provide habitat for popular fish like salmon and herring, protect shorelines from erosion and filter out nutrient pollution.

Slime molds are among the world's strangest organisms. Long mistaken for fungi, they are now classed as a type of amoeba. As single-celled organisms, they have neither neurons nor brains. Yet for about a decade, scientists have debated whether slime molds have the capacity to learn about their environments and adjust their behavior accordingly. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

There's no denying that human intelligence makes our species stand out from other life on Earth. Our modern brain is an evolutionary feat more than 520 million years in the making, and it is the key to everything that makes us human. But while human brains are extraordinary, we don't have a monopoly on intelligence. "Reserving the term'cognition' for typically human problem-solving abilities ... and dismissing simpler behavior as mechanistic, reflexive, and hard-wired does not do justice to the behavioral complexities of even the simplest of organisms," University of Gronigen psychologist Marc van Duijn and his colleagues write in a widely cited 2006 paper on cognition. You might think of tool use as an exclusively human activity, but macaques on an island off Thailand have learned to use stones as tools to shuck oysters.

April 12, 2018 --Visit this online directory of the nearly 200 faculty members at Hampshire College and you'll find that, listed between a professor of communications and a visiting professor of video and film, is a petri dish of yellow schmutz. The schmutz is a plasmodial slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, a glob of living cells that exhibits decidedly non-schmutzlike behavior, such as solving mazes and anticipating periodic events – so much so that in 2017 Hampshire, a private liberal arts school in Amherst, Mass., awarded it a position of "visiting non-human scholar." The abilities of non-animals to remember events, recognize patterns, and solve problems are prompting scientists and philosophers to rethink what thinking is. In the 20th century, science demolished the notion that humans are the only animals to exhibit complex thinking; in the 21st, biologists are beginning to see cognition in other biological kingdoms – not just slime molds, but also plants. This shift in thought could not only help scientists better understand cognition's workings and its origins, but it could also help in the search for intelligence beyond Earth.