题目内容
Pool Watch
Swimmers can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says that on average 15 people drown in British pools each year, but many more suffer major injury after getting into difficulties. Now a French company has developed an artificial intelligence system called Poseidon that sounds the alarm when it sees someone in danger of drowning.
When a swimmer sinks towards the bottom of the pool, the new system sends an alarm signal to a poolside monitoring station and a lifeguard's pager. "In trials at a pool in Ancenis, near Nantes, it saved a life within just a few months, " says Alistair MeQuade, a spokesman for its maker, Poseidon Technologies.
Poseidon keeps watch through a network of underwater and overheard video cameras. AI software analyses the images to work out swimmers trajectories(轨道，轨线). To do this reliably, it has to tell the difference between a swimmer and the shadow of someone being cast onto the bottom or side of the pool. "The underwater environment is a very dynamic one, with many shadows and reflections dancing around. " says McQuade.
The software does this by "projecting" a shape in its field of view onto an image of the far wall of the pool. It does the same with an image from another camera viewing the shape from a different angle. If the two projections are in the same position, the shape is identified as a shadow and is ignored. But if they are different, the shape is a swimmer and so the system follows its trajectory.
To pick out potential drowning victims, anyone in the water who starts to descend slowly is added to the software's "pre-alert" list, says McQuade. Swimmers who then stay immobile on the pool bottom for 5 seconds or more are considered in danger of drowning. Poseidon double-checks that the image really is of a swimmer, not a shadow, by seeing whether it obscures the pool's floor texture when viewed from overhead. If so, it alerts the lifeguard, showing the swimmer's location on a poolside screen.
The first full-scale Poseidon system will be officially opened next week at a pool in High Wycombe. Buckinghamshire. One man who is impressed with the idea is Travor Baylis, inventor of the clockwork radio. Baylis runs a company that installs swimming pools -- and he was once an underwater escapologist (表演脱身术的人)with a circus. "I say full marks to them if this works and can save lives, " he says. But he adds that any local authority spending 230,000 -- plus on a Poseidon system ought to be investing similar amounts in teaching children to swim.
AI means the same as
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Computer Mouse
The basic computer mouse is an amazingly clever invention with a relatively simple design that allows us to point at things on the computer and it is very productive. Think of all the things you can do with a mouse like selecting text for copying and pasting, drawing, and even scrolling on the page with the newer mice with the wheel. Most of us use the computer mouse daily without stopping to think how it works until it gets dirty and we have to learn how to clean it. We learn to point at thing before we learn to speak, so the mouse is a very natural pointing device. Other computer pointing devices include light pens, graphics tablets and touch screen, but the mouse is still our workhorse.
The computer mouse was invented in 1964 by Douglas Englehart of Stanford University. As computer screens became popular and arrow keys were used to more around a body of text, it became clear that a pointing device that allowed easier motion through the text and even selection of text would be very useful. The introduction of the mouse, with the Apple Lisa computer in 1983, really started the computer public on the road to relying on the mouse for routine computer tasks.
How does the mouse work？ We have to start at the bottom, so think upside down for now. It all starts with mouse ball. As the mouse ball in the bottom of the mouse rolls over the mouse pad, it presses against and turns two shafts. The shafts are connected to wheels with several small holes in them. The wheels have a pair of small electronic light-emitting devices called light emitting diodes (LED) mounted on either side. One LED sends a light beam to the LED on the other side. As the wheels spin and a hole rotates by, the light beam gets through to the LED on the other side. But a moment later the light beam is blocked until the next hole is in place. The LED detects a changing pattern of light, converts the pattern into an electronic signal, and sends the signal to the computer through wires in a cable that goes out the mouse body. This cable is the tail that helps give the mouse its name. The computer interprets the signal to tell it where to position the cursor on the computer screen.
So far we have only discussed the basic computer mouse that most of you probably have or have used. One problem with this design is that the mouse gets dirty as the ball rolls over the surface and picks up the dirt. Eventually you have to clean your mouse. The newer optical mice avoid this problem by having no moving parts.
Most computer users want to know how the computer mouse works.
Taiwan's authoritarian and repressive regime was for decades a mirror image of that of the main- land, but over the last 20 years both have taken enormous steps, with Taiwan leading the charge, to- ward opening up their markets, economies and the societies. Taiwan is a highly successful tiger economy, accounting for more than 10 percent of the world's production of information-technology components.
With both China and Taiwan members of the World Trade Organization, the European Commission rightly opened a European Trade and Economic office almost 12 months ago in Taipei. There is no doubt that the European Union should continue to develop industrial and economic links with Tai- wan and that the EU should also welcome the emerging multiparty democracy and respect for human rights on the island. But this should not blind Europe to the wider economic and political picture in Asia.
China will and should be one of the engines of the world economy in this century. In 2003 the Chinese economy, with its 1.3 billion people, grew at nearly 10 percent, and this is believed to be a conservative estimate. By contrast, the European Central Bank last June predicted the eurozone's growth at 1.1 to 2.1 percent for 2004. China's manufacturing sector grew by 17 percent last year when most of the European manufacturing sector seemed to be in decline. It is in all of our interests that this growth continues and that a solid EU-China partnership is developed. This prospect will be endangered only if China is provoked into an arms race with its neighbors.
One way of ratcheting up the tension would be to call into doubt the one China principle that the EU has supported for so long. Those supporting Taiwan's independence threaten to do exactly that. Yes, the EU should ensure Taiwan is not forced into any shotgun marriage with China, but equally, we should not encourage a destabilization of the status quo. The 23 million Taiwanese should be looking toward an accommodation with China, rather than using interests within the United States and EU to promote an agenda that would threaten us all.
This passage may be______.
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