美国国家公共电台 NPR--A computer program designed to sort mice squeaks is also finding whales in the deep

A computer program designed to sort mice squeaks² is also finding whales in the deep

Transcript³

Deep Squeak¹ is the name of an artificial intelligence program that was designed to detect the high-frequency "squeaks" mice and rats make when they are stressed.

But a new application of the technology is putting a much bigger emphasis on the "deep": It's being used to search for whales and other marine⁴ mammals in a ocean environments.

If that seems like a classic case of mislabeling, blame marine ecologist Elizabeth Ferguson and her company Ocean Science Analytics, which leads the project.

One of the company's lines of work is helping⁵ people building offshore⁶ wind farms track the impact of their projects on marine mammals, to make sure they aren't being harmed.

"Any kind of operations that happen in the ocean require there be some monitoring or mitigation," Ferguson says.

You could just go out in a boat and look for whales and dolphins in the area of interest, but she says that doesn't always give you an accurate count: "Some species are difficult to see at the surface or they spent a long time at depth."

Teaching a computer to spot squeaks

She found a different solution in the work of Kevin Coffey, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Washington who studies the calls rats and mice make when they're stressed. Those call are different from the sounds they make when they're not stressed.

On his longer-term projects, someone in his lab often got stuck listening to many hours of audio to identify the rodent⁷ calls. He and his colleagues at the University of Washington thought they could turn to artificial intelligence to ease that burden.

"You take the audio signal you turn it into an image and then you can you can see the calls by eye," Coffey says. And computers have gotten very good at analyzing⁸ and identifying images using what's called deep learning.

Coffey created a program that was good at classifying the visual representations of the mouse calls as stressed or non-stressed, and called it Deep Squeak.

Searching for undersea songs

Elizabeth Ferguson heard about the program and figured that what works for mice in cages could be modified to work with marine mammals in the ocean.

She shows the results of using her modified version of Deep Squeak on about two and a half hours of audio recorded within a couple of miles of the Oregon coast. The program has drawn⁹ a green box around anything it thinks looks like a marine mammal sound.

Sponsor Message

"You can see that there's definitely a wide range of calls and a high degree of variability in those calls But it's still done a pretty good job of detecting them," Ferguson says.

What's in a name?

But really: Is Deep Squeak the name you want to use for a program that detects whale calls?

"No we're going to change it," Ferguson says with a laugh. "So we're going to be calling at 'Deep Waves.' "

I told her I didn't think that had the same panache¹⁰.

"Should we find something better? Have any suggestions?"

So far, I haven't. But if you have an idea, drop me a line. [email protected]. I'll pass it along.

1 squeak   

n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密

参考例句：

• I don't want to hear another squeak out of you!我不想再听到你出声！
• We won the game,but it was a narrow squeak.我们打赢了这场球赛，不过是侥幸取胜。

2 squeaks   

n.短促的尖叫声，吱吱声( squeak的名词复数 )v.短促地尖叫( squeak的第三人称单数 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者

参考例句：

• The upper-middle-classes communicate with each other in inaudible squeaks, like bats. 那些上中层社会的人交谈起来象是蚊子在哼哼，你根本听不见。 来自辞典例句
• She always squeaks out her ideas when she is excited. 她一激动总是尖声说出自己的想法。 来自互联网

3 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

4 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

5 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

6 offshore   

adj.海面的，吹向海面的；adv.向海面

参考例句：

• A big program of oil exploration has begun offshore.一个大规模的石油勘探计划正在近海展开。
• A gentle current carried them slowly offshore.和缓的潮流慢慢地把他们带离了海岸。

7 rodent   

n.啮齿动物；adj.啮齿目的

参考例句：

• When there is a full moon,this nocturnal rodent is careful to stay in its burrow.月圆之夜，这种夜间活动的啮齿类动物会小心地呆在地洞里不出来。
• This small rodent can scoop out a long,narrow tunnel in a very short time.这种小啮齿动物能在很短的时间里挖出一条又长又窄的地道来。

8 analyzing   

v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析

参考例句：

• Analyzing the date of some socialist countries presents even greater problem s. 分析某些社会主义国家的统计数据，暴露出的问题甚至更大。 来自辞典例句
• He undoubtedly was not far off the mark in analyzing its predictions. 当然，他对其预测所作的分析倒也八九不离十。 来自辞典例句

9 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

10 panache   

n.羽饰；假威风，炫耀

参考例句：

• She dresses with great panache.她穿著十分浮华。
• Her panache at dealing with the world's media is quite astonishing.她应付世界媒体的派头非常令人吃惊。