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音頻科普：旁觀的螞蟻也能幫助工作流程
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音頻科普：旁觀的螞蟻也能幫助工作流程
?To understand fire ant strategies for working effectively without clogging traffic jams, researchers studied how the ants dug tunnels in glass particles that simulated soil. Credit: Rob Felt, Georgia Tech為了理解火蟻是用什么策略來維持高效工作而不堵塞交通的，研究人員探索了螞蟻在模擬土壤的玻璃顆粒中挖掘隧道的過程。
Fire ants tunnels got excavated efficiently by only a small percentage of the group doing most of the work, thus avoiding pileups in tight spaces.
火蟻隧道通常由一小部分成員高效完成，因此避免在狹小空間內(nèi)造成堆積的現(xiàn)象。
撰文\播音：丹尼爾?阿克曼（Daniel Ackerman）?
翻譯：張朵兒
審校：張清越
?
Freeloaders. They just sit around while their hard-working colleagues get things done.?But might freeloaders actually be necessary for society to function efficiently? The answer could be yes—at least when it comes to fire ants and their efforts to dig nests underground.
旁觀者。他們只是在勤勞的同事完成工作時坐在那里。但是否有可能，這種閑人是社會有效運作的必要條件？答案可能是肯定的—至少對于火蟻在地下挖巢時是如此。
?
?“Fire ants are quite common in Georgia and in fact most of the bottom third of the U.S., having come here in the '30s from South America.”
“三十年代的時候從南美來到這里火蟻在佐治亞州是很常見的，實際上在美國南部的近三分之一都是如此。”
?
Daniel Goldman, a physicist at Georgia Tech. Fire ants are highly social organisms. So, Goldman and his colleagues wanted to know how individual ants knew what to do without a central leader issuing orders.
喬治亞理工學院的物理學家丹尼爾?戈德曼說。火蟻是高度社會化的生物。因此，戈德曼和他的同事想知道在沒有首領發(fā)布命令的情況下，每一個螞蟻是如何知道該做什么的。
?
To find out, Goldman’s team labeled individual fire ants with paint and then watched them dig their slender tunnels—barely wide enough for two workers. Turns out, just 30 percent of the ants did 70 percent of the labor. “I was surprised that we ended up with so few workers actually doing the work at any one time.”
為了找到答案，戈德曼的團隊用油漆標記了單獨的火蟻個體，然后觀察它們挖掘細長的隧道—寬度甚至無法同時容納兩個工人并排。事實證明，30％的螞蟻完成了70％的工作。“我很驚訝最終只有這么少的工人在不停地做這項工作。”
?
A quarter of the ants never even entered the tunnel. Others crawled inside, but left without excavating a single grain of dirt. These idling and retreating behaviors ensured the crowded tunnels did not get clogged with insect traffic, which would grind the construction process to a halt.
四分之一的螞蟻甚至沒有進入隧道過。其它的爬進去過，但沒有挖掘出一粒泥土就離開了。這些旁觀和撤退確保了擁擠的隧道不會被堵塞以至于暫停施工。
?
And when the scientists removed the five hardest-working ants from the colony, others immediately jumped in to compensate—with no reduction in the group’s productivity. Seems that it doesn’t matter which ants are working or freeloading at a given time, as long as there is some division of labor to keep the tunnels flowing smoothly. The findings are the journal Science. [J. Aguilar et al., Collective clog control: Optimizing traffic flow in confined biological and robophysical excavation]
當科學家從這片殖民地中移除了五只工作最努力的螞蟻時，其他螞蟻會立即趕上來填補空缺—團隊的生產(chǎn)力完全沒有降低。看起來，只要隧道里的工作進展順利，螞蟻們誰在工作而誰在摸魚就并不重要了。研究結果發(fā)布在《科學》雜志上。
?
Goldman’s team also modelled the ants’ nest-building on computers. And the most efficient excavation happened in the simulations where the electronic ants behaved similarly to their live counterparts.
戈德曼的團隊還在計算機上建立了螞蟻筑巢的模型。并發(fā)現(xiàn)模擬效率最高的模式中，電子螞蟻的表現(xiàn)與實際中的表現(xiàn)類似。
?
The study could have implications for robotics. Imagine groups of robots sent to search rubble for disaster survivors. Or nanobots coursing through our bodies to diagnose illness and deliver targeted medical treatment. Such robot swarms will need to avoid getting jammed up in tight spaces. It might be necessary to program them so some just sit back and watch their comrades work.
該研究可能會對機器人界產(chǎn)生影響。想象一下，一群機器人被派去在瓦礫中尋找幸存者，或者是納米機器人在我們的身體內(nèi)部診斷疾病并提供有針對性的醫(yī)療。這樣的機器人群需要避免在狹小的空間中卡住。也許有必要對它們進行編程，以便讓部分機器人旁觀它們的同志們工作。
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?To understand fire ant strategies for working effectively without clogging traffic jams, researchers studied how the ants dug tunnels in glass particles that simulated soil. Credit: Rob Felt, Georgia Tech為了理解火蟻是用什么策略來維持高效工作而不堵塞交通的，研究人員探索了螞蟻在模擬土壤的玻璃顆粒中挖掘隧道的過程。
Fire ants tunnels got excavated efficiently by only a small percentage of the group doing most of the work, thus avoiding pileups in tight spaces.
火蟻隧道通常由一小部分成員高效完成，因此避免在狹小空間內(nèi)造成堆積的現(xiàn)象。
撰文\播音：丹尼爾?阿克曼（Daniel Ackerman）?
翻譯：張朵兒
審校：張清越
?
Freeloaders. They just sit around while their hard-working colleagues get things done.?But might freeloaders actually be necessary for society to function efficiently? The answer could be yes—at least when it comes to fire ants and their efforts to dig nests underground.
旁觀者。他們只是在勤勞的同事完成工作時坐在那里。但是否有可能，這種閑人是社會有效運作的必要條件？答案可能是肯定的—至少對于火蟻在地下挖巢時是如此。
?
?“Fire ants are quite common in Georgia and in fact most of the bottom third of the U.S., having come here in the '30s from South America.”
“三十年代的時候從南美來到這里火蟻在佐治亞州是很常見的，實際上在美國南部的近三分之一都是如此。”
?
Daniel Goldman, a physicist at Georgia Tech. Fire ants are highly social organisms. So, Goldman and his colleagues wanted to know how individual ants knew what to do without a central leader issuing orders.
喬治亞理工學院的物理學家丹尼爾?戈德曼說。火蟻是高度社會化的生物。因此，戈德曼和他的同事想知道在沒有首領發(fā)布命令的情況下，每一個螞蟻是如何知道該做什么的。
?
To find out, Goldman’s team labeled individual fire ants with paint and then watched them dig their slender tunnels—barely wide enough for two workers. Turns out, just 30 percent of the ants did 70 percent of the labor. “I was surprised that we ended up with so few workers actually doing the work at any one time.”
為了找到答案，戈德曼的團隊用油漆標記了單獨的火蟻個體，然后觀察它們挖掘細長的隧道—寬度甚至無法同時容納兩個工人并排。事實證明，30％的螞蟻完成了70％的工作。“我很驚訝最終只有這么少的工人在不停地做這項工作。”
?
A quarter of the ants never even entered the tunnel. Others crawled inside, but left without excavating a single grain of dirt. These idling and retreating behaviors ensured the crowded tunnels did not get clogged with insect traffic, which would grind the construction process to a halt.
四分之一的螞蟻甚至沒有進入隧道過。其它的爬進去過，但沒有挖掘出一粒泥土就離開了。這些旁觀和撤退確保了擁擠的隧道不會被堵塞以至于暫停施工。
?
And when the scientists removed the five hardest-working ants from the colony, others immediately jumped in to compensate—with no reduction in the group’s productivity. Seems that it doesn’t matter which ants are working or freeloading at a given time, as long as there is some division of labor to keep the tunnels flowing smoothly. The findings are the journal Science. [J. Aguilar et al., Collective clog control: Optimizing traffic flow in confined biological and robophysical excavation]
當科學家從這片殖民地中移除了五只工作最努力的螞蟻時，其他螞蟻會立即趕上來填補空缺—團隊的生產(chǎn)力完全沒有降低。看起來，只要隧道里的工作進展順利，螞蟻們誰在工作而誰在摸魚就并不重要了。研究結果發(fā)布在《科學》雜志上。
?
Goldman’s team also modelled the ants’ nest-building on computers. And the most efficient excavation happened in the simulations where the electronic ants behaved similarly to their live counterparts.
戈德曼的團隊還在計算機上建立了螞蟻筑巢的模型。并發(fā)現(xiàn)模擬效率最高的模式中，電子螞蟻的表現(xiàn)與實際中的表現(xiàn)類似。
?
The study could have implications for robotics. Imagine groups of robots sent to search rubble for disaster survivors. Or nanobots coursing through our bodies to diagnose illness and deliver targeted medical treatment. Such robot swarms will need to avoid getting jammed up in tight spaces. It might be necessary to program them so some just sit back and watch their comrades work.
該研究可能會對機器人界產(chǎn)生影響。想象一下，一群機器人被派去在瓦礫中尋找幸存者，或者是納米機器人在我們的身體內(nèi)部診斷疾病并提供有針對性的醫(yī)療。這樣的機器人群需要避免在狹小的空間中卡住。也許有必要對它們進行編程，以便讓部分機器人旁觀它們的同志們工作。
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