05853597

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05853597 Mehlhorn, Kurt The Physarum computer. Katoh, Naoki (ed.) et al., WALCOM: Algorithms and computation. 5th international workshop, WALCOM 2011, New Delhi, India, February 18--20, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-642-19093-3/pbk). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6552, 8 (2011). 2011 Berlin: Springer EN

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-19094-0_3

Summary: Physarum is a slime mold. It was observed over the past 10 years that the mold is able to solve shortest path problems and to construct good Steiner networks [2,4]. In a nutshell, the shortest path experiment is as follows: A maze is built and the mold is made to cover the entire maze. Food is then provided at two positions $s$ and $t$ and the evolution of the slime is observed. Over time, the slime retracts to the shortest $s-t$-path.