Doctor Pigeon will see you now
鸽子医生可以见您了
Next time you see a pigeon flying around, look at it with some respect - it might be able to help with the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases.
下次看到盘旋的鸽子时,带着一些尊重的眼光去看待——它可能有助于人类疾病的诊断和治疗。
A recent study has shown that these birds could be trained to detect breast cancer from images as accurately as humans.
最近的一项研究表明,这些鸟类可以像人类一样通过训练从图像中准确地检测出乳腺癌。
It's all about their visual memory - these birds have plenty of it even if their brains are very small. Professor Edward Wasserman from the University of Iowa, a co-author of the study, says: "Pigeons can distinguish identities and emotional expressions on human faces, letters of the alphabet, misshapen pharmaceutical capsules, and even paintings by Monet versus Picasso." And Wasserman adds that the birds' visual memory capacity is equally impressive, with a proven recall of more than 1,800 images.
这一切都与它们的视觉记忆有关——即使他们的头脑很小,但它们的视觉记忆容量巨大。来自爱荷华大学的爱德华·沃瑟曼教授是这项研究的合著者之一,他指出:“鸽子能够区分人脸、字母、畸形的药用胶囊,甚至是莫奈和毕加索的画作上的身份和情感表达。”他还补充说,这些鸟的视觉记忆能力同样令人印象深刻,它们能记住1800多张图片。
So how did the scientists find out about the amazing ability of these birds? They taught different pigeons to distinguish microscope images of cancerous and non-cancerous tissue and rewarded them with food every time they got it right.
那么科学家们是如何发现这些鸟类惊人的能力的呢?他们教不同的鸽子分辨癌变组织和非癌变组织的显微镜图像,并在每次它们做对的时候奖励它们食物。
It didn't take long to get good results. After two weeks of training in 'pigeon medical school', the 'students' recorded 85% accuracy as they managed to identify cancerous tissue from images they had not seen before.
没过多久这就有了不错的成果。在“鸽子医学院”接受了两周的训练后,这些“学生”从从未见过的图像中识别出癌变组织的准确率达到85%。
But pigeons are not the only animals showing potential to help human diagnosis. A team at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has shown that a dog can be trained to smell urine samples of patients to identify thyroid cancer. It lay down where it could smell cancer and turned away if not. The animals got it right in 30 cases out of 34.
但鸽子并不是唯一有潜力帮助人类诊断的动物。阿肯色大学医学科学的一个研究小组已经证明,狗可以通过训练来嗅出病人的尿液样本来识别甲状腺癌。如果他闻出有癌症气味就会躺下,如果没有,它就转身离开。这在34个案例中有30个是成功的。
So don't dismiss the abilities of these animals. They might be much more intelligent than you think.
所以不要忽视这些动物的能力。他们可能比想象中的更聪明。
词汇表
diagnosis
诊断
treatment
治疗
disease
疾病
to detect
检测
breast cancer
乳腺癌
accurately
精确地
brain
大脑
to distinguish
区分,鉴别
misshapen
畸形的
pharmaceutical capsules
药用胶囊
recall
记性
microscope images
显微镜图像
cancerous
癌症的
non-cancerous tissue
非癌症的组织或细胞
accuracy
准确性
urine samples
尿液样本
thyroid
甲状腺
to dismiss
不予理会,不予考虑