科學家設計出估算蔓越莓產量的新辦法
Wisconsin is famous for cheese. But it's also the United States' number-one producer of a tart, red fruit that's on pretty much every Thanksgiving dinner table.
威斯康星州以奶酪聞名。此外，在美國，它也是一種酸酸的、紅紅的水果的第一產地，這種水果還是感恩節餐桌上的必備菜品。"We have this reputation of being the dairy state, but cranberries outnumber the cows," said Susan Hagness, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
威斯康星大學麥迪遜分校的電氣工程師蘇珊·哈格奈斯稱：“雖然威斯康星有着乳製品州的美譽，但這裏的蔓越莓其實比奶牛多。”Cranberries, she says, are big business -- they're the official state fruit! And supply chain managers need estimates of the size of the upcoming harvest. Which can be hard to make.
她表示，蔓越莓是一個很大的產業--因爲它們是該州的州果！每到豐收季，蔓越莓的供應商都要估算收成，這項工作十分艱辛。
"The current approach for estimating cranberry yield is literally to go out into the field and hand pick and hand count all the cranberries in a one-square-foot area. This is obviously an inefficient and laborious approach. There can be up to 900 berries per square foot."
“目前估算蔓越莓產量的辦法就是到地裏去，對一平方英尺的蔓越莓進行手工實地採摘和手工計數，很顯然，這種方法效率低下，耗時費力，因爲一平方英尺內蔓越莓的產量可能高達900個果子。”
So scientists from Ocean Spray asked Hagness for help. And she and her team found in lab tests that zapping cranberry plants with microwaves, and then studying the signal that bounces back, might work.
所以，來自優鮮沛公司的科學家就向哈格奈斯尋求幫助。她和她的團隊在實驗室試驗時發現，用微波對蔓越莓進行刺激，研究反射回來的信號，或許就能算出蔓越莓數量。Recall that your microwave oven works by exciting water molecules in whatever you're heating up. Same concept here: microwaves interact differently with plump, juicy cranberries -- which contain lots of water -- than they do with leaves.
回想你用微波爐加熱東西時，不管你加熱的是什麼，都會激發物體裏面的水分子。同樣的道理，蔓越莓果實鼓脹多汁，比蔓越莓葉含水更多，它們對微波的反射情況也有差異。The return signal thus provides a good estimate of the number of cranberry clusters in a given plot.
因此，反射回來的信號可以很好地估算出指定土地的蔓越莓的數量。By the way, the microwaves for this application are very low power -- on par with the radiation that comes out of a cell phone. "You know we're not cooking the cranberries right there in the field."
順便說一下，這種應用的微波能量很低--與手機的輻射同等水平。“你知道的，我們畢竟不是去烹飪田裏的蔓越莓。”
