问答题

You type a word or phrase into an Internet search engine such as Google or Yahoo, hit return and in an instant, dozens of "hits" -Web sites containing words that match your query-appear on the computer screen. Now imagine a similar database that operates not with words but with shapes, specifically, leaf shapes. It would work like this: carry a camera cell phone into a forest, pick a leaf from a tree and snap its<br>portrait. [1] In an instant, the phone transmits the image to a computer that matches a shape of the leaf<br>against a database of leaf shapes from thousands of plant species around the world. Exact matches for the leaf are returned to the screen of your phone along with species names and detailed botanical information. Sound farfetched? Such a device is already very close to reality, thanks to recent collaboration between the department of botany at the Smithsonian&39;s National Museum of Natural History and the computer science departments of Columbia University and the University of Maryland. [2] Tentatively called the Image Identification System or IIS, the invention has the potential to revolutionize the identification of plant species in the field and greatly accelerate the naming of new plant species.<br>[3] For Peter Belhumeur, a computer scientist at Columbia University, who studies the use of computer vision to identify human faces, it all started years ago in the Connecticut woods. Belhumeur recalls just how hard it was to use a standard field guide to identify different tree species during walks with his children. "I rarely found the right answer on the first try," he says. Brainstorming with computer scientist David Jacob of the University of Maryland about possible new uses for computer object recognition, "We both thought of leaves," Belhumeur recalls. So in 2001, [4]Belhumeur and Jacobs came to visit John Kress, Director of the Natural History Museum&39;s Botany (植物学) Department, which house the national plant specimens, a resource with 95,000 catalogued botanical type specimens ----the definitive reference specimens used to identify new plant species ---- and an additional 4.8 million representatives of plant species from around the world.<br>[5] What the scientists came up with was an ambitious plan to develop an electronic field guide---- a<br>portable system that could automatically identify a tree species from the shape of one leaf. They wanted the device to simultaneously provide researchers in remote locations Internet access to botanical data on species in the Smithsonian&39;s database.


单选题

All of the debates about the role of bioethics as social institution, if not discipline, come at times when the programs for conducting study of bioethics are in something of generational disturbance. The scholars who lead those bioethics centers and institutions in the United States, for example, are mostly age 60 or older. But there are comparatively fewer scholars well into the role of associate professor than there are scholars of recent appointment to assistant professor. One possible consequence may be that a remarkable number of young scholars with less scholarly and administrative standing than what is typical of directors of bioethics programs have assumed the reigns of some of the most-published and longest-standing bioethics organizations. Where their predecessors had been trained in the strictures of discipline and only came to bioethics at midcareer, these new leaders were trained to work in the field of bioethics from the beginning of their careers. It is too early to predict the effect of this very rapid transition, which is accelerating due to the efforts of dozens of medical, nursing, veterinary, and public-health schools that do not yet have a serious bioethics program, but want one, and quickly. And perhaps the most confusing part about the debates concerning the status of bioethics has to do with the relationship between scholars of bioethics and the rapidly multiplying armies of clinicians,clergy,politicians,researchers,and others who suddenly find themselves "working on bioethics" . On the one hand, academic specialists in bioethics and their institutes struggle to determine what "counts" for the success of the field: what kinds of publications, what kinds of skills (clinical ethics consultation? philosophical analysis? Etc.) and what kinds of activities. On the other hand, there are thousands of people whose job or volunteer life involves something they call bioethics. For example, most hospitals around the world are struggling to keep up with perceived needs for in-house analysis of the ethical implications of policies or cases. At times this takes the form. of an ethics committee grappling to craft policy about futility (不育症) or genetic testing or when not to resuscitate the patient. At times it takes the form. of an institutional review board, responsible for reviewing proposed research activities involving human subjects, and responsible for the ongoing monitoring of those activities. And at times this takes the form. of education for staff and patients about the various devices and procedures that have come out of bioethics over the past thirty years. Whatever the form. these activities take, there appears to be no more consensus about what counts as good "part-time" bioethics than there is about academic bioethics scholarship. This problem is made acute by the incredible growth of bioethics everywhere. And it is aggravated by the lack of consensus among professional bioethicists, about what counts as sufficient training to be an amateur bioethicist<br>The debates about the role of bioethics occurred when

A. bioethics as a social institution had given way to nursing schools.
B. the older associate professors were considered better for bioethics.
C. bioethics had become a discipline in universities and colleges.
D. a leadership shift was undertaking for current bioethics programs.

火星搜题