THINKING BACTERIAL OR NEURONAL STYLE: BEN JACOB?

°
DID YOU SEE THE GOOGLE ADSENSE ADS ON THE RIGHT?

1) A REMINDER ON BACTERIA, NEURONS AND THINKING
----------------------------------------------------------------------

As you know from my first post, my novel entitled"WE SHR", a mispelling for "WE SHARE", presents the adventures of what I call Bactorgs, bacterial colonies having social and intelligent behaviors (e.g. Weiss's work). It also present Andrones, cultured neural networks showing also social and intelligent behaviors (e.g. Potter's work). Finally, and "audaciously", the novel will discuss scientific theories about and computational models of these systems.

Why "audaciously": because there is a rule in novel writing; every time you insert an equation or a hard scientific reasoning, your audience decreases by 50%¨. By that account, the "WE SHARE" audience should be at the 0.00000001 level or perhaps worse. My goal is to make science pleasant. We'll see if I succeed.

So, we need to discuss thinking in bacteria, thinking in cultured neuronal networks and models of these systems. Unexpected as it once seemed to me, there is a researcher working, at a very high level, on these three subjects. Meet Eshel Ben Jacob. We will first discuss its work on bacteria. Then we'll see what he did on neurons and, later on in another post, his modeling work.





2) BEN JACOB'S WORK ON BACTERIAL COLONIES (MY BACTORGS)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seen from my point of view, Eshel is a first class "Jack of all trades". He is at Tel Aviv University where he does world class work in Physics and Biophysics. He is a deep thinker and works on many subjects. As you may guess, the ones which interest us at the moment are bacterial cultures.

• Eshel demonstrated that , when challenged to grow in difficult conditions, bacterial colonies respond by adopting very sophisticated spatial growing patterns optimizing their food intake. He challenges them to grow in conditions of limited nutrients or against antibiotics or with spatial obstacles and they respond by devising clever growing spatial patterns (mostly spatially organized fractals). Probably, bacterial colonies need to do some colony-level computation to do that.
  
• Here is the title of a paper, Eshel published in the journal "Trends in microbiology" . This paper was the most downloaded paper from that journal in 2004. You'll find it on Eshel's site (see later). Read it and think twice: It's not Sci Fi but hard, respectable and respected science

Can you believe this title? Eshel argues that his experiments and those of other show that bacteria have developed sophisticated communication capabilities (quorum sensing, chemicals and plasmid exchanges) which they use to reach a high level linguistic communication ability between themselves (shared interpretation of messages, dialogs and meaning-based communication allowing intentional (??) behavior, decision making, recognition and identification of other colonies, ... all Eshel's own words).

This may be called "bacterial social intelligence..." what else?

How can I extrapolate for "WE SHARE"?

It seems to me that the development of Eshel's idea requires going beyond communication to move into the realm of inheritable colonial memory and commonly shared genomic context. What I need is a computer or a Turing machine based on a bacterial colony (see later my discussion of issues like collective brains, fluid neural networks and amorphous computing).

Eshel Goes further. I do not understand him yet but he seems to imply that the limitations of Turing machines may be overcome by bacterial colonies. I do not claim to understand this or even to admit that they are limitations to Turing machines?

Here is a picture of two of Eshel's colonies. He argues that such fractal shapes cannot be generated by chance. He also suggests that they express some computational parallel algorithm at work. I agree, clearly, Mandelbrot is at work here. (With permission from Eshel Ben Jacob)





Remark however, that generating such shapes might, computationally speaking, be easier than expected and may need only much simpler algorithms than what you would think at first sight. For instance, I have myself shown that a drop of glue squeezed between two plates of glass which are then separated slowly, form on each plate a fractal tree which is determined not by intricate algorithms but simply by the speed of separation of the plates and the surface tension, adherence and flow properties of the glue. No complex algorithm is involved to generate this kind of complex fractal patterns but only a few parameters and some rules and physical laws.

Issues like Gellman's complexity, crypticity and depth are playing a role here (estimating the complexity of the algorithms needed to coordinate such a growth). That's food enough for another post.

I will soon re-read Eshel's papers. This is not always easy going and I'll write some more posts about it later. Anyway, here is a cornerstone of WE SHARE: a respectable scientific paper discussing bacterial intelligence, social life and colonial memory. Those are the three pillars on which, in my novel, I build my underground bacterial colonies, the Bactorgs. A bit of extrapolation and you have great perspectives. Actually, you do not have to really extrapolate. Eshel's paper is better than Sci Fi.

Here is a link to this paper on Eshel's site: Ben jacob's Trends in microbiology 2004 paper.
And here is a link To Eshel's site itself: Eshel's site.

3) BEN JACOB'S WORK ON CULTURED NEURONS NETWORKS (MY ANDRONES):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Independently of his work on bacteria, Eshel works also on multi-electrodes arrays and cultured networks (remember Potter's work discussed in my first post). So, he is a precursor, not only of bactorgs but also of Andrones.

His work is complementary to Potter's work. Potter has extremely sophisticated, closed loop, two way electrical communication and learning in a long term neuronal culture but he has no way to communicate chemically with his cultures.

That might be a problem since a lot of reward and penalty in the brain is probably done chemically (neuro-transmitters, endorphins, cannabinoids ...). Eshel developed a way to have his cultured network on the electrode array stimulated at selected points by chosen chemicals. Every year people discover new chemical neurotransmitters and find new roles for them, see for instance the recent discoveries on NO and now the new hypothesis on the role of chimiokines.

There is clearly now a need to combine Potter's and Ben Jacob's work.

Here is a picture which tells you all you need to know for now about Eshel's work.


In the upper panel, you see an MEA and its cultured network (1). Then a micropipet (2) used for local chemical stimulation at selected locations (probably mounted on some kind of stereotactic equipment. Potentials are recorded and sent to a computer (3). The volume of the stimulating droplets are controlled by a second micrometer and a syringe.

In the lower panel, we show the MEA (dots and black lines), its cultured network (cells on the blue plate) and on top, the translucent micropipet placed above one of the recording electrodes. For stimulation, Ben Jacob currently uses picrotoxin (an inhibitory antagonist, i.e. a substance relieving the inhibition of excitation felt by some neurons) and show that this stimulation makes it possible to imprint multiple memories in the form of collective modes of neuronal firing and that these memories persist for days. Memories.... an important element of what Andrones need! (With permission from Eshel Ben JAcob)

4) EXTRAPOLATING POTTER'S AND BEN JACOB'S WORK FOR WE SHR
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let us consider the implications of coupling Potter's and Ben Jacob's works: chemical and electrical stimulation, long term culture, two way electrical communication for adaptive embodied behavior. Let's extrapolate a little bit.

Why not add some neurogenesis ability to cultured neuronal cultures (controlling stem cells is another hobby of Potter)? Why not also control and direct axonal growth?

Why not have multi-culture networks on the same or on different interconnected plates. A bit of cortical cells, a bit of hippothalamus, a bit of hippocampal and so on, all and each growing their own kind of connections and interconnecting between themselves?

(Note; there is a paper which I am, right now, unable to quote exactly which describes the guidance of axons by external stimulators along long distance (several millimeters ) lines. We could use such systems to interconnect separate subcultures together i.e. to build andrones as multi-cultures having specific global connection patterns.

What you get is then close to what I envision for what I call an "Androne", the neural culture hero in my novel. It lives on a set of MEA and Petri dishes and has all the features I've just listed + a few others.

NOTE: Just to tell you that, in the novel, the researcher developing Andrones has discovered a library of electrical signals and chemicals to communicate with them, make them learn, store and retrieve memories and so on... My Andrones will perhaps feel elementary emotions and perhaps some form of elementary consciousness (after all, it is probably a graded property). Is it too far fetched? What do you think? Compare with current models of pre-consciousness like Edelman's robots?

5) CONCLUSION
--------------------

All that to tell you that you have just met Eshel, one of my heroes. As Einstein said, you define a scientist by what he does. You have to admit Eshel does a lot and every bit of his work is minted in originality . Here we have just scratched the surface. Go diving deep in his site (see before)!

Again time to sleep, My cat Touti is meowing and that's the signal. In the next post, you'll meet some other people:

• Klaas Hellingwerf from Amsterdam who sees bacteria as proto-neurons and has organized the first European community sponsored workshop and research program on this theme.
• Bonnie Bassler who studies the languages bacteria use to speak between themselves ( in a given species and among species).

Together, they make an impressive case for the idea that bacteria have some elementary thinking ability (thinking being defined conservatively but operationally by what Mc Culloch and Pitts models can do..., a limited form of thinking admittedly but not a bad one as a starting point).

And as usual, a thought for the night:

To define art, don't ask what you can still add in a picture but what you can still erase...

Don't dream about Andrones and Bactorgs or, like me, just a little bit.

Jacques

THINKING BACTERIA AND NEURONS: WEISS AND POTTER

°
DID YOU SEE THE GOOGLE ADSENSE ADS ON THE RIGHT?

1) WHY THIS BLOG?
------------------------

You are a scientist, an engineer, a student of science and engineering or finally a layman interested in these subjects. You do not dislike "Sci FI" but you are choosy about it..

I hope that this blog will interest you! I write it for you. What's my goal?

I see myself as a young guy (65). I am an avid vertical caver (spelunker ??) and a university professor and mainly researcher in biomedical engineering and mathematical modeling in biology. I work in France (Ecole Centrale, Lille), in London (City University, Kings College and University College) and in Switzerland (Federal Polytechnic School, Lausanne).

At the moment, I am embarking on the writing of a science-based thriller happening in Provence (France). The novel is entitled "WE SHR", a mispelling for "WE SHARE". I give you my title here for further reference but, to maintain the suspense, I won't explain it here .... In "WE SHARE", two of the "good guys" are what I call "Andrones" and "Bactorgs".

What are ANDRONES?

Andrones (from androids and neurones) are cultured networks of living real neurons. An androne is made of a few tens of thousands neurons and associated cells living in a set of dishes in a laboratory and fed by appropriate nutrients.

What are BACTORGS?

Bactorgs are bacterial multi-species colonies. Their name, inspired from Cyborgs, is a shortcut for " bacterial organisms". They are living in a deep cave, somewhere in Provence, in a oxygen-deprived, sulfur based atmosphere! They nevertheless have contacts with the outside world (guess how? I will not reveal it now).

Andrones and Bactorgs develop some form of rudimentary (or perhaps not so rudimentary) intelligence... They have elementary moods and emotions. They have a memory... and perhaps (I have not yet discovered it) some rough elementary consciousness and a culture. They certainly have multiple adventures. All this may seem a bit preposterous but, as I will explain at full length in this blog, every of these features will just be an extrapolation of some facts or hypotheses which have been published in respected scientific journals by well known scientists.

Of course in the novel, I have humans characters too. At the first level, they play the main roles and I try to make them very real people with problems, strengths, weaknesses, questions, interests, emotions and so on. However, if you look at a deeper level, they are a bit secondary... At this deeper level, what is truly essential is the presence and behaviors of Andrones and Bactorgs...

A bit far fetched, well, perhaps not so much... You'll see!

"WE SHARE", a thriller which will be deeply based on existing science!

The main characteristic of my novel is that it will be written for thriller-loving scientists and engineers. I intend to justify and explain all the events described in "WE SHARE" by presenting and explaining the relevant science in supplementary chapters or excerpts. Science itself will be seen as a rational and positive factor, not one to be presented lightly or feared like in the works of some other authors. Of course, the use of science by humans may be bad or some harmful consequences may develop but the pursuit of science will be a beacon in the night, perhaps the only one.

So, hypotheses will be pondered, mechanisms detailed, extrapolations justified etc. It will be a novel for scientists, engineers, students and interested laymen more than for a larger audience. I hope it will be extremely hard Sci Fi but Sci Fi nevertheless. Some points will just be extrapolations and dreams.


Obviously, I'm not omniscient, so, I need your help with the science... a lot of help and this blog is the place where I require it from you.

I'll present my understanding of (or lack of... ) all the scientific papers which I find so inspiring. They are many questions and bones of contention. There are many things I simply do not know or misunderstand. Read my posts and see if you are interested in sending me your comments. Let's start some discussions.

Apologies are due..., I am new to blogging and, there also, I still have many things to learn, mainly on how to design fancy posts. Moreover, English is not my native language... I'm only a plain French speaking guy but in a couple of years, I intend to publish the novel as a series on the web simultaneously in French and English.

Which scientific topics will we be discussing?
------------------------------------------------------

On top of the adventures of human characters, we will be discussing subjects in biology and bioengineering related to bacteria, viruses and neurons. We will deal with mathematical modeling, complexity theory and computers. Here is a shortlist of some subjects we will be discussing:

• cultured neural networks, competition and cooperation in bacteria, bacterial signaling, social life in bacteria, cave dwelling bacteria, intelligence in bacteria, bacteria as (very) early prototypes of neurons, mitochondria and endogenesis, stem cells and neurogenesis, interaction between brains and bacteria, chaos in biological simulations, dynamic mathematical models, metadynamical models, agent models, synchronization, self organized criticality, edge of chaos, ... and many other.

If you are familiar with some of these subjects, keep reading. You might be surprised of the relationships with all the other. You're intrigued but not familiar with these themes... well, keep reading too, you might become fascinated.

For the cognoscenti, here are a few names of people whose work will be discussed (not an exhaustive list indeed):

• Steve Potter (GATECH, Neural cultures), Ron Weiss (Princeton, Synthetic biology), Eshel Ben Jacob (Tel Aviv, bacteria and neural networks separately), Saeed Tavazoie (Pavlovian bacteria), Henry Markram (Lausanne, brain modeling), Craig Venter (CVRI, bioengineering), Bonnie Bassler (Princeton, quorum sensing and bacterial signaling), Klaas Hellingwerf (Amsterdam, bacteria as rudimentary neurons...), Per Bak (self organized criticality), Alan Perelson (metadynamics), Edelman (consciousness), E. O. Wilson (collective brains), Stuart Kaufman (SFRI, order in chaos), James Lovelock (the father of GAIA), Annette Summers Engel, Louise Hose, Diana Northup, Penny Boston (cave geologist and biologists) and many other...

DOES IT WET YOUR APPETITE?

Some words of caution to end up this introduction:

• In this blog and in my novel, science and engineering are good guys, not bad guys like in too many thrillers intended for the large public in the US. We will be 180° opposite to these kind of approaches. I will not build on people's irrational fears. Science will be seen positively and explained in detail. Most extrapolations will be plausible and justified. Some people will use science in bad ways but science itself will be a positive force.
• My distant ideal would be to follow in Greg Bear's steps (Darwin's radio) whose science was reviewed in depth in a six pages article in "Nature" which recommended the work as a superb novel with outstanding science ideas... Not bad for a non scientific author!
• The sociology and economy of science and ethical questions like animal experiments or patenting genes or organisms will be discussed occasionally but only in the framework of what scientists consider a normal ethical approach to science. This will not be a place for fighting against science but for discussing it in an open minded way.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the next few posts, I will introduce a few people and their works. Later, I'll discuss these works in detail. Right now, let us start with a first contact with a couple of works which set the ground for what Bactorgs and Andrones are all about.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


2) A FIRST STEP TOWARD BACTORGS: WEISS'S BACTERIAL PROGRAMMING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thus, as I have told you, "Bactorgs" are bacterial multi-cellular organisms (this is a verified fact of science: bacterial colonies behave as multicellular organisms) gone intelligent up to a point (this is an extrapolation, how intelligent...). So, a first thing I have to look at is what is known currently on intelligence in bacteria.. a tall order.

Let's take a first step: a lot of (perhaps all of... Turing's thesis) intelligence is computing, So, what about computing in bacteria?


What do some modern scientists do with cells? How can they modify them to give them computing abilities?

So, one of my my starting point will be "synthetic biology": a name coined by Tom Knight from MIT to denote the building by engineers of artificial cells from basic biological bricks. What can we do in synthetic biology? For instance can we convince bacteria to do some useful computations by inserting the appropriate genes in their genomes? Meet Ron Weiss...

It is seven in the morning. Ron, a professor in Princeton University, is busy programming real bacteria to do his own bidding. YES, you have well understood... programming bacteria in a Petri dish,... live ones, not computer models.

He is inserting genes which, when expressed, program the microbes to behave as he wants in response to stimuli from their surroundings. For instance, he can make them draw patterns in red and green in their Petri dishes or do boolean logic computations using as input variables the presence or absence of selected chemicals in the environment of the bacteria.

Using the bacteria to detect toxic products in the environment or to produce worthy chemicals at our command is just around the corner (i.e. in ten years). This is an example of a new field of study called "synthetic biology" defined by Tom Knight and, like the bacteria themselves, it is in full bloom at the moment. Both man-made and naturally occurring bacterial computing will be one of our main themes in this blog and in the novel.

If you already knew about this, you may not feel too excited but otherwise, frankly, aren't you flabbergasted?

Here are a few examples of patterns drawn by millions of bacteria in Ron's lab. The bright spots are disks emitting a substance to which the bacteria respond by flashing a light of a different color depending on the substance concentration. The concentration of the emitted substance decreases with the distance from the emitting disk and the color of the bacterial response depends on the local concentration. Hence the patterns...
(Image courtesy from Ron Weiss, Princeton University)

To know more about Ron Weiss's work, click here: "Ron Weiss's lab.

Weiss's work and WE SHARE: the lesson

As far as WE SHARE is concerned, the general lesson to be drawn from Ron's work is that a bacterial genome may be programmed to do logical computations. If Ron can do it (i.e. if synthetic biology can do it), evolution has probably done it too. This is the general hypothesis I presented before. Thus, naturally occuring bacterial colonies will compute logical functions useful to them.

NOTE: I think that Weiss and his colleagues have programmed an eukaryot cell to be a universal logic computer for all combinatorial (not sequential) Boolean functions of up to five variables. Transpose that in bacteria, extrapolate a little bit, add memory, go from combinatorial to sequential functions (add feedback) and here you are... the general finite automaton or even approximate Turing Machine I told you about...


3) A FIRST STEP TOWARD ANDRONES: POTTER'S CULTURED NETWORKS

As you now know, in" WE SHARE", I also have Andrones, i.e. cultured neural networks gone a long way on their road to intelligence. So, what do we know about cultured networks of real neurons. Meet Steve Potter.

In Atlanta, Steve, a professor at GA TECH, is hard at work teaching a few thousand neurons living in a Petri Dish to draw nice pictures. He calls them a cultured neuronal network.

To do that, he isolated them from a fish or rat brain. Then he gave them the proper conditions to live and re-connect between themselves on a nutrient medium in a Petri dish. The bottom of the Petri dish was a multi-electrode array and the neurons connected themselves to the electrodes. Then he wired the electrodes to a computer and from there to a robotic arm drawing a picture on a sheet of paper.

Potter ans his colleagues succeeded in establishing a two way communication between the computer and the cultured network. Using this, he can reward or punish histhe neurons networks by sending appropriate electrical pulses. Progressively, hecan make them draw something close to what he wants or finds aesthetically pleasing. The cultured network learns...

Consider the implications for art, philosophy, brains and humans. They call their project "MEART" (for MEA = multi-electrodes arrays) but I very much prefer their initial name for it. At that time, they were using neurons taken from fishes and growing on a silicon chip, hence the "Fish and Chips" project....

When I read about this, I could not believe my eyes: real living isolated neurons, connecting, learning (i.e. modifying their connection patterns) to do something we want... Consider the science application: better understanding of what it means to learn in terms of changes in the connection pattern of the network , the stimuli to which they respond by changing the pattern and the dynamics of these changes. A window on brain learning mechanisms!

Consider the practical applications... for instance, a cultured network learning how to control a drone (they are not far from it, perhaps ten years, they've a cultured network controlling simple manoeuvers of simulated plane in a flight simulation program)! I told you, mind blowing and so cute!

Look at a first picture of their work.

On the left side, a culture of real world neurons in a Petri dish... cutesy , don't you think?
On the right a close view of some of the neurons growing on the dish. Note that the bottom of the dish is the multi-electrodes array which can transmit and receive signals to and from the cultured neural network. (Image courtesy from S. Potter, GA Tech)

And a second image:

On the left, a view of the robotic arm during an art show in Moscow, the neural brain was in Atlanta and the signals were transmitted both ways between Moscow and Atlanta by Internet.



On the right, some drawings. You might not be impressed at first sight. This is not Cezanne or Van Gogh, just a few thousands neuronal cells drawing on their own. When you think about it, it's another ballgame... texture, forms, trackings, colours... This is a totally different world view. It is is of course just the starting point of their work but it, once and forever, changes what we means by the very basis of what we call "art". It moves the focus from semantics to "being a visual animal" and getting" brain internal rewards" from the perception of pure form and color shapes without any interpretation. Where exactly does the art sensation lies. In your wallets (art collectors)..., in your emotional and semantic cortex or primarily in your visual relays (geniculate corpus or the primary visual areas...)? This is one of the works which, in the last few years, made me feel pure joy (no kidding)! What do you feel and think? (Image courtesy from Steve Potter, GA Tech)

And a third picture, a pragmatic one: It is very nice to feel joy and aesthetic vibrations but will MEART sell...? Yes, they did it.

This is one of the four MEART paintings which was sold to the MEIAC (Spanish Museu Ibero Americano de Arte Comtemporanea) for their permanent collection.
(Image courtesy from S. Potter,
GA Tech)

If you are not impressed, what can you still hope from life? And that's just their beginning point.

Steve and his colleagues did a lot more: controlling robots, disentangling the pulse spikes their cultures use for learning, and last but not least, succeeding in making their little guys (cultured networks) survive and learn for up to two years. Such a long time... and a first step toward long life... (extrapolate).
To know more about Steve Potter's work and lab, click on the following link: "Steve Potter's Neurolab".

Potter's work and WE SHARE: the lesson

Clearly, Potter's cultured networks are a good basis for Andrones. They demonstrate neuronal processing in a culture and some elementary form of learning. Add memory, diversification in subnetworks with different cells and processing capabilities (e.g. reticulate cells, cortical cells, sensory cells, motor cells and so on). Do not forget glial cells and perhaps stem cells. Stimulate them not only electrically but also chemically, learn more about reward-penalty mechanisms and you have a well behaved Androne.

4) Conclusion of this first post; Where do I stand now?

I see Weiss's and Potter's works as strong signs that, someday, Bactorgs will be discovered in the real world and Andrones made by us will exist. This is the basis on which I felt the irresistible impulse to write a novel about them. Of course, in this post, I have just scratched the surface of these concepts. In the following ones, I will go into more details on every point discussed above.

It's about time to end up this post. My cat Touti ( pronounce "Tootee", French short name for "Tout-en-poil", meaning "completely made of hairs") is complaining that it is time to go to bed. The next posts will be on a few more examples of works used as inspirations for my novel:

- Eshel Ben Jacob's work on intelligent and social bacteria (and also on neuron networks)

- The works of Klaas Hellingwerf and Bonnie Bassler on signaling and "thinking" in bacteria.

- Saeed Tavazoie's paper on associative learning in bacteria.

- Theodore Berger's work on neural prostheses.

In that introductory set of posts, some supplementary ones will be devoted to modeling biological sets of cells on the computer.

- I'll present some work by people from Simon Levin's circle and, very modestly, some of the works from my own very small circle.

Finally, I've told you that I am a caver and that my Bactorgs live in caves. I will thus present what is known about astonishing cave bacteria who thrives not on oxygen but on sulphur, CO2 and rock. These pre-oxygen but still living communities are found in a few caves (e.g.: Movile, Villa Luz, Frasassi and Lechuguilla).
They support whole, non oxygen-based ecologies with worms, spiders, insects... In these slimy caves, bacteria produce sulphuric acid (pH = 1) which dissolve the rock. The atmosphere is choked with deadly (for us) H2S. This is a totally weird environment. This is where my Bactorgs live and have lived for millions of year.

Extrapolation: envision a thinking bacterial community acting as a multicellular being which is renewing itself, avoiding degeneration and senescence (How?) and evolving during all that time. How can it avoid boredom, get constant impulses to renew itself? My answers: by developing ways to contact the outside world (see alter), by living on the edge of chaos and in a state of self organized criticality (see complex system theory and Per Bak's work with deep regrets for his untimely death) and perhaps by developing a Zen attitude to life.

I'll thus also present briefly what cave geologists and microbiologists like Diane Northup, Penny Boston, Louise Hose and other have done to study these caves, namely Movile Cave in Romania, Villa Luz and Lechuguilla in America and Mexico and Frasassi in Italia

A last post in this introductory series will be devoted to Craig Venter's claim of having built the first "Man made " bacteria. I have very mixed feelings about this work (not about its result but about its patenting, commercial and marketing aspects) but it should be acknowledged as a great work. If it is true (which I believe) it is a landmark.

A THOUGHT FOR THE NIGHT:

We live in exciting times (scientifically at least, perhaps not from a human point of view: economically driven society, ecological irresponsability, short view imposed by our political systems driven by economic interests) and we start growing old when our regrets dominate our hopes and projects. Do not let that happen to you.

Next time you sleep, have wonderful dreams. By the way, one of the modes of interactions of bactorgs with humans and andrones will be to influence their dreams , yes, andrones and bactorgs dream...

Jacques