Scientific Calendar Event



Starts 25 May 2009 17:30
Ends 25 May 2009 20:00
Central European Time
ICTP
Leonardo da Vinci Building Seminar Room
Strada Costiera, 11 I - 34151 Trieste (Italy)
Bacteria, the first and most fundamental of all organisms, lead rich social life in complex hierarchical communities. Collectively, they gather information from the environment, learn from past experience, and take decisions. Bacteria do not store genetically all the information required for efficient responding to all possible environmental conditions. To solve the new encountered problems (challenges) posed by the environment, they first asses the problem via collective sensing, recall stored information of past experience and then execute distributed information processing by the 109-12 bacteria using sophisticated communication strategies to link the intracellular computation networks of each bacterium (including signaling path ways of billions of molecules) into a network of networks. I will show illuminating movies of swarming intelligence of live bacteria in which they solve optimization problems that are beyond what we, human being, can solve with our most powerful computers. This will lead me to a discussion about the special nature of bacteria computational principles.