VOA常速英语2018--智能手机内置传感器:你不知道的健康大助手（在线收听）

Computer scientist Shwetak Patel and his team are developing new sensing systems. The initial focus was really around energy and water monitoring.They built a new generation of smart sensors that monitor electronic interference on a home’s power line or water pressure changes in the plumbing. Most of this technology has already found industrial applications. And Patel and his team turned their attention to adapting the technology for personal health monitoring.

计算机科学家韦塔克 帕特尔(Shwetak Patel)及其团队正在研发新传感系统。最开始，他们关注的焦点是能源和水质检测。他们打造了新一代的智能传感器，可以监测水管设施对电源线或水压变化的电子干扰情况。该技术的大部分已投入到工业应用中。帕特尔及其团队将注意力转向将这项技术用于个人健康监测上。

So how do we take this noise and make it into a signal of interest? That was a kind of the core of what we did for many years. And we’re taking that work and applying it to other domains. They’re looking to take advantage of all the functionality built into our smart phones. With the users permission, this App can use the microphone, built into most smart phones, to listen to background noises,such as coughing, searching for patterns that suggest a trip to the doctor might be an order. We construct these models that try and understand how sound works, how it what its patterns are?And we give it a whole bunch of examples of different kinds of audio, things like people talking,things like people laughing, sneezing and of course coughing.This App uses a phone’s camera to check haemoglobin levels in blood by analyzing the color of capillary fluids through the skin.

那么，我们怎样将噪声为我们所用呢？这是我们多年来研究的核心问题。我们准备将这项工作应用到其他领域。他们正在寻求充分利用智能手机的所有性能。经过用户许可后，手机应用程序就能通过麦克风来获取背景噪声，比如咳嗽声。该应用程序倾向于将看医生设定为一种命令。我们构建了这些模型，试图理解声音产生的原理和模式。我们列举了很多例子，都是各种不同的音频，还有人们说话的声音，大笑、打喷嚏的声音，当然也有咳嗽声。这个应用程序通过使用手机的摄像头来检测血液中血红蛋白的水平，方式是分析皮肤中毛细血管的颜色。

Generally what happens is if you’re anemic your bloods are going to be a little less red,and we take advantage of that by putting your finger over a camera of a phone,the camera of the phone can actually see the coloration of the blood.And this test uses the camera tell parents worried about jaundice in newborn infants.Now jaundice is something that doctors who have seen tons of babies, it just can figure out on a very basic level of; is this baby, do they need get treatment or are they in a good condition, where as a first-time parent has no idea necessarily what jaundice might look like.

总体而言，如果一个人贫血，那么他/她的血液就不会那么红。我们可以借助这一点，即把手指头放在手机摄像头前，因为手机摄像头可以看见血液的颜色。这个测试就是通过摄像头来让担心新生儿患有黄疸的父母了解情况。黄疸需要资历深的医生来诊治，因为这样的医生能判断出婴儿的基本情况：这个孩子是否需要治疗，身体状况如何。但没有经验的医生都不知道黄疸的症状是怎样的。

The researchers say the built-in sensors found in smart phones are already commonplace but their applications and their implications for our health and well-being may be more far-reaching than we ever imagined.

研究人员表示，智能手机里内置传感器已经非常普遍，但其应用及其对我们健康和福祉的重要性可能要比我们想象的更深远。