高中英语阅读训练Bees'Buzzes Warn of Chemical Threats, Dia
You've heard of the canary (金丝雀)in the coal mine: In the prence of poisonous gas, the bird will sway or drop dead, alerting miners to get out.
Now rearchers have learned that the collective buzzing of honeybees can provide a similar biological alert.
But unlike canaries, bees can differentiate between chemicals and will produce different sounds bad on what toxin they detect, scientists say.
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Bees could help soldiers and curity workers detect toxic chemicals such as tho potentially ud in terror attacks, the rearchers say.
The incts can also alert beekeepers to illness in a hive, becau bees make different sounds when suffering from various maladies, such as infections or parasites.
Rearchers with Bee Alert Technology, a company affiliated with the University of Montana
in Missoula, aim to create a handheld device that can warn humans of the dangers that bees detect.
"The same technology ud for military applications may provide a diagnostic tool that could revolutionize how beekeepers manage their bee hives," said Jerry Bromenshenk, who heads the firm.
好段100字左右Signature Buzz
Bees make their buzzing sounds by vibrating their wings and bodies and pushing air through tiny airways they u for respiration.
Bee Alert's scientists t out to e if this mechanism could be affected by chemicals and other elements in the bees' environment.
"The military has been looking for a rapid means of detecting poisonous chemicals, and honeybees were a good candidate becau humans and the bees share a common nsitivity to many of the same chemicals," Bromenshenk said.
His team expod colonies of bees to various chemicals that the incts might encounter in an agricultural tting.
"The U.S. Army was looking for a respon [to the chemicals] in 15 minutes, but we were getting a respon in 30 conds," he said.
The real surpri, he added, was that the different sounds bees produce can actually signal what chemicals they're nsing.
列车停运查询"That absolutely flabbergasted (使特殊的礼物作文产业分析报告……目瞪口呆)us," Bromenshenk said. "We thought at best they would be able to tell that something harmful was prent."
The rearchers devid a nsitive detection system and placed it in the hives to record the bees' sounds.
Using the same technology as voice recognition software, the scientists were able to analyze the buzzing to determine which buzzes correspond to which chemicals.
"We were surprid by the huge number of audio signatures," said Larry Tarver, a software engineer who designed a program to analyze the buzzing.
旅游文化Bee Security
The bee alert system could be ud for protecting military troops in camp or as a curity system around a ba.
Bees recycle the air in their hives every three minutes and never sleep, so they could provide 24-hour air monitoring, the scientists note.
爱与被爱The technology could also help beekeepers keep their hives healthy.
"We can tell not only whether the colony has mites or not, but also the level of infestation they have," Bromenshenk said.
His team is working on developing a handheld device that could detect an infestation.
"We hope to have an acoustics-recorder system that you can u to walk up to a hive an
d scan it, and within 30 conds you would get a readout that tells you if there's something wrong in the hive," Bromenshenk said.
（from National Geographic）
1. What’s the difference between bees and canaries in alerting?
2. How do bees making their buzzing sounds?手写板怎么使用
3. What does the underlined word “candidate” mean here?
4. What can the bee alert system be ud for?
