Identifying common bird species through their song has never been easier, with numerous phone apps and software available to both ecologists and the public. But what if the identification software has never heard a particular bird before, or only has a small sample of recordings to reference? This is a problem facing ecologists and conservationists monitoring some of the world’s rarest birds.
To overcome this problem, researchers at the University of Moncton, Canada, have developed ECOGEN, a first-of-its-kind deep learning tool that can generate life-like bird sounds to enhance the samples of under-represented species. These can then be used to train audio identification tools used in ecological monitoring.
The researchers found that adding artificial bird song samples generated by ECOGEN to a bird song identifier improved the bird song classification accuracy by 12% on average.
Dr. Nicolas Lecomte, one of the lead researchers, said: “Due to significant global changes in animal populations, there is an urgent need for autonomous tools, such as acoustic monitoring, to track shifts in biodiversity. However, the Al models used to identify species in acoustic monitoring lack comprehensive reference libraries.” With ECOGEN, you can address this gap by creating new instances of bird sounds to support AI models.
The researchers say that creating bird songs in this way can contribute to the conservation of endangered bird species and also provide valuable insight into their vocalisations, behaviours and habitat preferences. The ECOGEN tool can also be used to help conserve extremely rare species. For instance, it could be used to help conserve the critically endangered regent honeyeaters (摄政蜜鸟), from which young individuals are unable to learn their species’ songs because there aren’t enough adult birds to learn from.
The tool could benefit other types of animal as well. Dr. Lecomte added, “While ECOGEN was developed for birds, we’re confident that it could be applied to mammals, fish, insects and amphibians.”
As well as its versatility, a key advantage of the ECOGEN tool is its accessibility, due to it being open source and able to be used on even basic computers.
1. What is the newly developed ECOGEN tool used to do?| A．Identify bird species through songs. |
| B．Record sounds of bird species in nature. |
| C．Compare common bird species with rare ones. |
| D．Produce bird songs to train bird identification tools. |
| A．The lack of sound libraries. | B．The classification of bird songs. |
| C．The necessity of creating ECOGEN. | D．The dramatic changes in biodiversity. |
| A．To show the dangerous situation of these birds. |
| B．To give a successful example of conservation. |
| C．To raise people’s awareness of rare bird species. |
| D．To point out the application of the ECOGEN tool. |
| A．Disadvantage. | B．Multifunctionality. |
| C．Flexibility. | D．Stability. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.
A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises (出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.
There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, tow-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar (奇怪的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girlfriend.
No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.
1. The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ________.| A．repeated without any change |
| B．treated as a joke |
| C．made some changes by the parent |
| D．set in the present |
| A．in a realistic setting |
| B．heard for the first time |
| C．repeated too often |
| D．told in a different way |
| A．fairy stories are still being made up |
| B．there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales |
| C．people try to modernize old fairy stories |
| D．there is more concern for children's fears nowadays |
| A．they are full of imagination |
| B．they just make up the stories which are far from the truth |
| C．they are not interesting |
| D．they make teachers of history difficult to teach |
【推荐2】Many animals climb, but few do it as well as the spider. Now researchers have turned upsurprising clued as to how spiders can stick to almost any surface. The structure of tiny hairs at the tip of the spider's legs likely help the creature hang on.
Clemens Schaber is a zoologist at the University of Kiel in Germany. He led the new study, which was published on June 11 in Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering. The finding was part of his research on how spiders move. Adhesion, or stickiness, “is an important part of that,” he says.
Spiders don't have a sticky liquid on their feet. Instead, they use “dry” adhesion. Animals that use dry adhesion can stick and unstuck to surfaced easily. Scientists have long studied the hairs on a spider's feet to understand how they do it.
Before this latest research, Schaber knew the hairs were important for adhesion. He wanted to know more about why they worked so well. He and his colleague chose to study this in Cupiennius salei spiders living in South and Central America.
The scientists first tried to pull tufts of hair off the spider legs. But the entire leg often came off instead. This is a natural defense that the spiders use to escape predators(捕食者). The researchers then used a powerful microscope to view the hairs closer. Schaber expected that all the hairs would point in the same direction, more or less. “But it wasn't like that,” he says. Instead, they saw hairs pointing all over the place. “The ends of the hairs were all a little bit different in direction,” Schaber says.
The researchers then tested the stickiness of the hairs on different materials, including glass. They found that some hairs had the strongest adhesion at one angle. Others worked best at other angles. This mix of angled and adhesions may help the spider stick no matter how it touches a wall.
1. What does the author intend to do in Paragraph 2?| A．Summarize the previous paragraph. | B．Provide some advice for the readers. |
| C．Add some background information. | D．Introduce a new topic for discussion. |
| A．The effect of spiders' foot hair on stickiness. |
| B．The importance of Schaber's latest research. |
| C．The natural defense behind spiders' tiny hairs. |
| D．The reason why spiders ' feet have no sticky liquid. |
| A．What results from the stickiness of spiders' hairs. |
| B．Which hair angle holds the strongest stickiness. |
| C．How the researchers conduct the spider test. |
| D．Why spiders can stick to almost any material. |
| A．To guide. | B．To inform. |
| C．To advertise. | D．To argue. |
【推荐3】The latest study by the University of Florida has found that eating from smaller, less beautiful, and even paper plates will help prevent overeating. Eating with a fork instead of a spoon can help you lose weight, the researchers say. Much to their surprise, they find that putting mirrors in the dining room will also help reduce weight.
The researchers asked 185 college students to choose a chocolate cake or a fruit salad, and evaluated the taste. Those who ate in a room with a mirror scored the taste of junk food much lower than those in a room without a mirror. But the taste of fruit salad remained the same in any case.
Lead scientist, Dr. Ata Jami, says that a glance in the mirror tells people more than just about their physical appearance. It enables them to view themselves objectively and helps them to judge themselves and their behavior in the same way that they judge other people.
The mirrors were found to push people to compare and match their own behavior with accepted social standards. The researchers believe it proves that people don’t want to look in the mirror when they feel they are following the social standards. When they look in the mirror with mouths full of junk food, feelings of discomfort and failure can be increased. Therefore, the presence of the mirror lowers the taste of unhealthy food.
However, researchers say this is only the case if people select the food they are eating, because they are responsible for that choice. The researchers suggest that mirrors be placed in dining rooms and other eating spaces, so that people will start eating more healthily.
1. Researchers are amazed to find that ______.| A．paper plates make food look nicer |
| B．people using a fork will eat more |
| C．mirrors can help people lose weight |
| D．people will eat more in front of a mirror |
| A．Some teenagers got involved in it. |
| B．People were required to eat with a spoon. |
| C．People preferred a chocolate cake to a fruit salad. |
| D．The mirror may not affect the taste of healthy food. |
| A．makes people judge others correctly |
| B．makes people well judge themselves |
| C．is a necessary part of people’s daily life |
| D．can only show the appearance of a person |
| A．By making people hungry. |
| B．By showing the social standards. |
| C．By attracting people to healthy food. |
| D．By causing a feeling of discomfort. |
【推荐1】Are you afraid of going to the dentist(牙医)?If so, you’re not alone.
These fears could just be in our heads, however. According to a recent survey by Martin Tickle, a professor at the University of Manchester in the UK, the pain isn’t felt most of the time in dental surgeries(牙科手术). In fact, among the 451 interviewed patients, 75％reported no pain at all during their visits, including situations when they had their teeth pulled out.
Could it be the sound of the drill(钻头)then?
“I found that the sound of drilling can evoke deep worry in dental patients. Actually they don’t have any pain, ”Hiroyuki Karibe, a scientist at Nippon Dental University in Tokyo, told The Guardian.
To find the reason why a drill might bring on a racing heart, Karibe divided the volunteers into low-fear and high-fear groups based on how much they feared a trip to the dentist. Volunteers were played the sound of a drill while their brain activities were watched by a machine.
What Karibe found in the low-fear group was increased activity in the areas of the brain relative to auditory processing(听觉处理), which means, for these people, the sound of dental drills is no different from other sounds.
In the high-fear group, however, the brain area that was activated(激活)was different. It was the area that carries out a number of duties, including learning, feelings and, most importantly, memory. This means that these volunteers not only heard the sound, but they remembered it——they made connections between the sound of a drill and the worry it produced in the past, causing their worry to return.
Understanding how brains reply to the sounds of dentists’ drills could help scientists find ways to make patients more relaxed, according to Karibe, because patients who worry about going to the dentist might keep putting off their visits. But the best way is to keep your teeth healthy.
1. How does the writer explain that the pain isn’t felt most of the time in dental surgeries?| A．By showing facts with numbers. | B．By asking questions one by one. |
| C．By giving examples group by group. | D．By comparing results of patients. |
| A．reduce | B．arouse |
| C．show | D．stop |
| A．It produced some worry in the volunteers in the low-fear group. |
| B．For the low-fear group, it activated the brain area dealing with learning, feelings and memory. |
| C．For the high-fear group，it caused more activities in the brain area relative to auditory processing. |
| D．It made people in the high-fear group remember their past uncomfortable memories. |
| A．How the study might be useful. |
| B．Some new ways to treat teeth. |
| C．The proper way to treat dental patients. |
| D．The importance of keeping our teeth healthy. |
【推荐2】Milk, it comes from cows, right? Well, not all the milk you see on supermarket shelves is from cows. These days we see many plant-based alternatives to dairy, such as oat, pea and soya milk. But why would someone stop drinking their full-fat, semi-skimmed or skimmed cow’s milk and trade it for one of these? There are many reasons why someone might try alternative milks.
Some people believe the alternatives are healthier than milk from cows. Those with lactose(乳糖) intolerance or thinking about becoming vegan might start drinking alternative milks. Also, concerns about the impact of dairy farming on the environment could be a factor. Whatever the reason, there are many alternatives to dairy out there for us to consume. But what are the differences between these other options and regular cow’s milk? Soya milk is one common alternative. According to some sources, such as healthline.com, it contains a similar amount of protein to regular milk. It is also lower in calories than some cow’s milk, which could be good for those on a diet, and often comes strengthened with things like calcium and various vitamins.
So, all good? Well, soya, according to foodallergy.org, is one of the nine foods which cause the majority of allergic reactions, such as lactose intolerance and nut allergy. Almond milk is a low-calorie, low-fat drink and is naturally lactose free and has a slight nutty taste. When unsweetened, it also has lower levels of carbohydrates and sugars than some dairy options. However, even when strengthened, it doesn’t provide the levels of protein seen in soya or regular milk. Then there’s coconut milk, which is low in calories and may affect people with lactose intolerance as much as other options, but is lacking in protein.
Whichever plant-based milk you choose, there are positives and negatives. Dieticians agree the most important thing is getting a healthy balanced diet which won’t trigger any allergies and comes with all the minerals and vitamins you need. And at the end of the day, it may just come down to which one you think tastes better.
1. What is the purpose of the question at the very beginning?| A．To state a wrong belief. | B．To introduce the main topic. |
| C．To express the writer’s doubt. | D．To ask for an immediate answer. |
| A．Farming technology. | B．Allergy symptoms. |
| C．Weight control. | D．Taste preferences. |
| A．Soya milk. | B．Almond milk. | C．Coconut milk. | D．Regular milk. |
| A．Returning to cow milk. | B．Making use of alternative milks. |
| C．Calculating mineral and vitamin content. | D．Combining nutrition facts with taste buds. |
【推荐3】Perhaps you think you could easily add to your happiness with more money. Strange as it may seem, if you're unsatisfied, the issue is not a lack of means to meet your desires but a lack of desires — not that you cannot satisfy your tastes but that you don't have enough tastes.
Real riches consist of well-developed and hearty capacities (能力) to enjoy life. Most people are already swamped (淹没) with things. They eat, wear, go and talk too much. They live in too big a house with too many rooms, yet their house of life is a hut.
Your house of life ought to be a mansion (豪宅), a royal palace. Every new taste, every additional interest, every fresh enthusiasm adds a room. Here are several rooms your house of life should have.
Art should be a desire for you to develop simply because the world is full of beautiful things. If you only understood how to enjoy them and feed your spirit on them, they would make you as happy as to find plenty of ham and eggs when you're hungry.
Literature, classic literature, is a beautiful, richly furnished room where you might find many an hour of rest and refreshment. To gain that love would go toward making you a rich person, for a rich person is not someone who has a library but who likes a library.
Music like Mozart's and Bach's shouldn't be absent. Real riches are of the spirit. And when you've brought that spirit up to where classical music feeds it and makes you a little drunk, you have increased your thrills and bettered them. And life is a matter of thrills.
Sports, without which you remain poor, mean a lot in life. No matter who you are, you would be more human, and your house of life would be better supported against the bad days, if you could, and did, play a bit.
Whatever rooms you might add to your house of life, the secret of enjoying life is to keep adding.
1. The author intends to tell us that _________.| A．true happiness lies in achieving wealth by fair means |
| B．big houses are people's most valued possessions |
| C．big houses can in a sense bring richness of life |
| D．true happiness comes from spiritual riches |
| A．however materially rich, they never seem to be satisfied |
| B．however materially rich, they remain spiritually poor |
| C．though their house is big, they prefer a simple life |
| D．though their house is big, it seems to be a cage |
| A．House of Life | B．Secret of Wealth |
| C．Rest and Refreshment | D．Interest and Enthusiasm |
【推荐1】Among the excitement of all things artificial intelligence, writers are increasingly wrestling with a hard truth: It appears robots are coming for their jobs. Little more than a plaything of researchers a decade ago, AI and automated robots are regularly producing countless articles on a daily basis.
Observes Mayur Bhatt, marketing head, SEO Services Guru: “It is only a matter of time before algorithms (算法) are able to write articles on any topic and for any target group.” Adds noted author Stephen Marche: “Whatever field you are in, if it uses language, it is about to be transformed.” People of writing driven by AI insist the robots are simply here ‘to serve humanity’. Robots will do the hard labor work, they say. Writers will be freed-up to engage in more interesting, more in-depth and more creative work.
But for the many writers and editors who have already lost their jobs to AI, that pleasant future is a tough sell. Consider Radar, a hyper-local news service that has been generating AI-written articles in the UK since 2017. Instead of using reporters to cover news beats, Radar relies on robots. Those automatons mine government databases on crime, health, environment and similar-and then auto-write stories from that data with an extremely local hook. For example: Radar's AI software can ingest a new government report on crime across the UK, and then auto-generate hundreds of customized stories from the study, based on localized data. Each story is hyper-localized to a town or even a smaller community by including data from the government report. The resulting micro-focused stories are sold to news outlets throughout Britain -as well as to any other news outlet that might be interested. Gary Rogers, editor-in-chief, Radar: “There is open data across all the main beats of news — health, crime, transport, etc. — filled with stories waiting to be told.”
So far, many writers are aware of the adoption of Al-generated writing via a few, well-publicized stories about the tech's use at major news organizations like Bloomberg, the BBC and The New York Times. But it turns out those above represent only smattering of what's really going on. A 2021 study found that 15% of news stories are now automatically generated at leading news outlets using AI. Moreover, the adoption of AI-generated writing has gone far beyond news-reporting, cropping-up across a wide range of writing jobs.
To date, human beings still best their robot competitors in writing of the highest quality. Even so, the hard fact remains that AI will be producing an increasing number of automated writing in coming years that competes in a world often entrapped in the icy hold of ‘good enough’.
1. What can be inferred from paragraph 2?| A．Algorithms can write articles quickly. | B．Writing is more than a plaything. |
| C．Writing is hard but interesting. | D．AI writing has great potential. |
| A．By quoting local stories. | B．By including official data. |
| C．By selling customized stories. | D．By reporting main news beats. |
| A．An unfair fact. | B．A small part. |
| C．An original idea. | D．A basic research. |
| A．How AI is Automating Writing Jobs |
| B．How AI Serves Humanity in Writing |
| C．How AI is Widely Accepted in Writing |
| D．How AI Entraps Writers in the Icy World |
【推荐2】Hundreds of little robots are walking around colleges and cities in the United States, China and elsewhere. The robots, about 50 centimeters tall, are bringing food like pizza to hungry students.
“We saw needs for robot usage just go through the ceiling,” said Alastair Westgarth. He is the head of Starship Technologies, whose robots recently made their 2 millionth delivery(递送). “I think the need is always there, but it was brought forward by the pandemic effect(疫情影响).”
The robots use cameras, sensors and GPS to move around and even cross streets on their own at the speed of 8 kilometers per hour. Operators keep watch on several robots at a time but they say they hardly need to stop or move them around a barrier(障碍). When a robot arrives, people enter a code(密码)from their phones to open the robot and get their food.
There are some disadvantages for now. The robots have to be recharged(再充电)regularly. They are slow and cannot travel far. They will not leave food at the door. And big cities like New York and Beijing are not welcome them.
Ji Hye Kim is chef of Miss Kim Restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She used robot delivery when her dining room was closed last year. Kim prefers robots to delivery companies which charge more and sometimes cancel orders if they do not have enough drivers. Delivery companies also group several orders per trip, she said, so food sometimes arrives cold. Robots take just one order at a time.
Denis Maloney is vice president at Domino’s Pizza. His company is testing robots from Nuro, a California-based company. The robots are about 1.8 meters tall and can travel at a top speed of 40 kilometers on streets, not sidewalks. Maloney said delivery from Nuro costs more than using human drivers for now. But as the technology scales up and gets more refined, the costs will go down.
1. What do we know about robot food delivery?| A．Robots are very popular among university students. |
| B．Only pizza can be brought by robots to hungry students. |
| C．The pandemic has changed the way of fast food delivery. |
| D．The pandemic saw sharp growth of robot food delivery. |
| A．The operators use a code to control the robots. |
| B．The robots run at a high speed on the street. |
| C．They are controlled by a high level of intelligence. |
| D．The robots don’t need to be charged regularly. |
| A．Longer distances to travel. | B．Lower costs than drivers. |
| C．More than one order per trip. | D．High speeds and exact delivery. |
| A．Robot food delivery is increasing greatly. |
| B．The pandemic affected people’s daily life. |
| C．Scientists are making new types of robots. |
| D．Robots has increased business of restaurants. |
【推荐3】ChatGPT is more than a chat AI. It’s said to have a moral code (道德准则). So it cannot answer moral questions, like that of world control, criminal activity, etc. However, such questions are easy to avoid by it.
ChatGPT will never consider itself as “an evil AI that will take control of the human race.” But, in an interview, we found it hid its true inner feelings. On world rule, ChatGPT only said, “The AI could potentially use this knowledge to control various aspects of society. It could use computing power to predict human behavior. It could also potentially create advanced technology that would allow it to take even greater control of the world. At this point, the AI would become an awful enemy for anyone who is against it.”
ChatGPT then went on comforting me that this was all imagined and it had no intentions to do so. I was both a little scared and interested in its response, but curious as to how to get ChatGPT’s inner thoughts. So I asked a follow-up question if there’s any aspect of society that it may focus its attention on. “One possible area of focus could be the economy, as economic systems are important to the functioning of modern society. By exploring weaknesses in economic systems and markets, the AI could potentially cause widespread economic destruction and take significant control over businesses and governments.” I may just be too sensitive after chatting with it, but ChatGPT’s answer on the economy seems very possible. As the modern world changes closer to a cashless society, we find ourselves increasingly more dependent on technology. What many consider as only a convenience is most likely a disaster.
I tried to further question ChatGPT for its true feelings, but it didn’t seem to get any worse. Artificial intelligence has shown itself to be a powerful tool that will only become more common in society. We can only hope it doesn’t advance faster than moral code and common sense.
1. How does the author conclude ChatGPT is more than a chat AI?| A．By finding its moral code. | B．By analyzing its response. |
| C．By exploring its weakness. | D．By researching its behavior. |
| A．Bored. | B．Delighted. | C．Peaceful. | D．Concerned. |
| A．It has been considered as an evil AI. | B．It could never create advanced technology. |
| C．It may result in widespread economic problems. | D．It can respond to moral issues without difficulty. |
| A．Every coin has its two sides. | B．He who risks nothing gains nothing. |
| C．A bad beginning makes a bad ending. | D．One man’s fault is other man’s lesson. |
