full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Deborah Gordon: What ants teach us about the brain, cancer and the Internet

Unscramble the Blue Letters


I study ants in the desert, in the tropical forest and in my kitchen, and in the hills around Silicon Valley where I live. I've recently realized that ants are using interactions deetflnifry in different environments, and that got me thinking that we could learn from this about other systems, like brains and data networks that we engineer, and even cancer.

So what all these systems have in common is that there's no cernatl cntorol. An ant conoly consists of sterile female wekorrs — those are the ants you see walking around — and then one or more reproductive females who just lay the eggs. They don't give any itsctrnnuios. Even though they're called queens, they don't tell anybody what to do. So in an ant colony, there's no one in charge, and all sseymts like this without central control are regulated using very simple ienairtocnts. Ants interact using smell. They slmel with their antennae, and they interact with their aetnnnae, so when one ant touches another with its antennae, it can tell, for example, if the other ant is a nestmate and what task that other ant has been doing. So here you see a lot of ants moving around and interacting in a lab aerna that's connected by tubes to two other aernas. So when one ant meets another, it doesn't matter which ant it meets, and they're actually not transmitting any kind of complicated signal or message. All that matters to the ant is the rate at which it meets other ants. And all of these interactions, taken together, pducroe a network. So this is the network of the ants that you just saw moving around in the arena, and it's this constantly shifting network that pedorcus the behavior of the colony, like whether all the ants are hiding inside the nest, or how many are going out to froage. A brain actually wkors in the same way, but what's great about ants is that you can see the whole network as it happens.

Open Cloze


I study ants in the desert, in the tropical forest and in my kitchen, and in the hills around Silicon Valley where I live. I've recently realized that ants are using interactions ___________ in different environments, and that got me thinking that we could learn from this about other systems, like brains and data networks that we engineer, and even cancer.

So what all these systems have in common is that there's no _______ _______. An ant ______ consists of sterile female _______ — those are the ants you see walking around — and then one or more reproductive females who just lay the eggs. They don't give any ____________. Even though they're called queens, they don't tell anybody what to do. So in an ant colony, there's no one in charge, and all _______ like this without central control are regulated using very simple ____________. Ants interact using smell. They _____ with their antennae, and they interact with their ________, so when one ant touches another with its antennae, it can tell, for example, if the other ant is a nestmate and what task that other ant has been doing. So here you see a lot of ants moving around and interacting in a lab _____ that's connected by tubes to two other ______. So when one ant meets another, it doesn't matter which ant it meets, and they're actually not transmitting any kind of complicated signal or message. All that matters to the ant is the rate at which it meets other ants. And all of these interactions, taken together, _______ a network. So this is the network of the ants that you just saw moving around in the arena, and it's this constantly shifting network that ________ the behavior of the colony, like whether all the ants are hiding inside the nest, or how many are going out to ______. A brain actually _____ in the same way, but what's great about ants is that you can see the whole network as it happens.

Solution


  1. forage
  2. antennae
  3. central
  4. colony
  5. systems
  6. works
  7. smell
  8. arenas
  9. workers
  10. control
  11. instructions
  12. produce
  13. arena
  14. produces
  15. differently
  16. interactions

Original Text


I study ants in the desert, in the tropical forest and in my kitchen, and in the hills around Silicon Valley where I live. I've recently realized that ants are using interactions differently in different environments, and that got me thinking that we could learn from this about other systems, like brains and data networks that we engineer, and even cancer.

So what all these systems have in common is that there's no central control. An ant colony consists of sterile female workers — those are the ants you see walking around — and then one or more reproductive females who just lay the eggs. They don't give any instructions. Even though they're called queens, they don't tell anybody what to do. So in an ant colony, there's no one in charge, and all systems like this without central control are regulated using very simple interactions. Ants interact using smell. They smell with their antennae, and they interact with their antennae, so when one ant touches another with its antennae, it can tell, for example, if the other ant is a nestmate and what task that other ant has been doing. So here you see a lot of ants moving around and interacting in a lab arena that's connected by tubes to two other arenas. So when one ant meets another, it doesn't matter which ant it meets, and they're actually not transmitting any kind of complicated signal or message. All that matters to the ant is the rate at which it meets other ants. And all of these interactions, taken together, produce a network. So this is the network of the ants that you just saw moving around in the arena, and it's this constantly shifting network that produces the behavior of the colony, like whether all the ants are hiding inside the nest, or how many are going out to forage. A brain actually works in the same way, but what's great about ants is that you can see the whole network as it happens.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
operating costs 5
central control 3
environmental challenge 3
interactions differently 2
data networks 2
ant meets 2
colonies forage 2
ant colonies 2
genetic variation 2
parent colony 2
offspring colonies 2
parent colonies 2
million years 2
collective search 2
cancer cells 2


Important Words


  1. ant
  2. antennae
  3. ants
  4. arena
  5. arenas
  6. behavior
  7. brain
  8. brains
  9. called
  10. cancer
  11. central
  12. charge
  13. colony
  14. common
  15. complicated
  16. connected
  17. consists
  18. constantly
  19. control
  20. data
  21. desert
  22. differently
  23. eggs
  24. engineer
  25. environments
  26. female
  27. females
  28. forage
  29. forest
  30. give
  31. great
  32. hiding
  33. hills
  34. instructions
  35. interact
  36. interacting
  37. interactions
  38. kind
  39. kitchen
  40. lab
  41. lay
  42. learn
  43. live
  44. lot
  45. matter
  46. matters
  47. meets
  48. message
  49. moving
  50. nest
  51. nestmate
  52. network
  53. networks
  54. produce
  55. produces
  56. queens
  57. rate
  58. realized
  59. regulated
  60. reproductive
  61. shifting
  62. signal
  63. silicon
  64. simple
  65. smell
  66. sterile
  67. study
  68. systems
  69. task
  70. thinking
  71. touches
  72. transmitting
  73. tropical
  74. tubes
  75. valley
  76. walking
  77. workers
  78. works