考研英語(yǔ)美文賞讀（36）：螞蟻?zhàn)匀恍袨榈谋澈?我們能學(xué)到什么

　　摘要：考研英語(yǔ)作為一門考研公共課，雖然大家都學(xué)了英語(yǔ)十幾年，卻仍經(jīng)常有總分過線掛在英語(yǔ)上的情況，因此英語(yǔ)復(fù)習(xí)不單單是單詞、做題。閱讀作為考研英語(yǔ)的大頭，僅僅做考研真題或許沒法滿足你的閱讀量，因此幫幫之后會(huì)不定時(shí)推出一篇英文美文，這些文章都與考研英語(yǔ)閱讀同源，多讀必有好處。

　　?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.

　　當(dāng)火蟻挖掘隧道時(shí)，它們采用“能者多勞”、“少人多干”的方針，從而避免了在狹小空間的“交通堵塞”的問題，極大地提高了工作效率。

　　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.

　　無事可干的螞蟻們呢？當(dāng)它們的“同事”忙的熱火朝天時(shí)，它就坐在一旁，啥也不干。但是否，這些“無所事事”者對(duì)社會(huì)的有效運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)至關(guān)重要呢？也許答案是肯定的，至少，當(dāng)火蟻挖掘地下巢穴時(shí)“無所事事”非常重要。

　　“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.”Daniel Goldman， a physicist at Georgia Tech.

　　“火蟻在喬治亞州非常普遍，實(shí)際上美國(guó)大約三分之一的火蟻，是在上世紀(jì)30年代從南美洲來到這里的。”喬治亞理工學(xué)院的物理學(xué)家丹尼爾·戈德曼說到。

　　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.

　　火蟻是高度社會(huì)化的生物。 因此，戈德曼和他的同事想知道，當(dāng)沒有中央領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人發(fā)布命令時(shí)，個(gè)體螞蟻怎么去做任務(wù)？

　　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.

　　為了找到答案，戈德曼的團(tuán)隊(duì)用油漆標(biāo)記了個(gè)體火蟻，然后觀察它們挖掘細(xì)長(zhǎng)的隧道——隧道寬度幾乎容不下兩只螞蟻。

　　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.”

　　事實(shí)證明，只需要30％的螞蟻能夠完成70％的勞動(dòng)量。 “我很驚訝于結(jié)果，自始至終，只有這么少的‘工人’一直在挖掘隧道。”

　　A quarter of the ants never even entered the tunnel. Others crawled inside， but left without excavating a single grain of dirt.

　　有四分之一的螞蟻甚至都沒有進(jìn)入隧道。另有一些螞蟻雖然爬了進(jìn)去，但沒有挖掘出一粒泥土。

　　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.

　　這些看上去“消極怠工”和“打退堂鼓”的行為實(shí)際上卻避免了隧道口的“交通擁堵”，否則挖掘工程可能會(huì)隨時(shí)中斷。

　　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.

　　而當(dāng)科學(xué)家從挖掘地現(xiàn)場(chǎng)拿走了5只最“勤勞苦干”的螞蟻時(shí)，其他螞蟻立刻“補(bǔ)上工位”，這完全沒有降低全隊(duì)的挖掘進(jìn)度。

　　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.

　　我們似乎得出這樣一個(gè)結(jié)論，即只要合理分工，保證隧道口的暢通無阻，挖掘期間誰(shuí)工作誰(shuí)怠工則無足輕重。研究結(jié)果刊登在《科學(xué)》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(tuán)隊(duì)用計(jì)算機(jī)模擬了螞蟻筑巢的過程。 模擬結(jié)果得出，在最有效的挖掘情況下模擬螞蟻的表現(xiàn)與其真實(shí)同類相類似。

　　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.

　　該研究可能對(duì)機(jī)器人發(fā)展產(chǎn)生影響。 我們可以想象一下，當(dāng)一群機(jī)器人在殘?jiān)珨啾诘默F(xiàn)場(chǎng)去尋找災(zāi)難幸存者時(shí)；或者當(dāng)納米機(jī)器人通過我們的身體來診斷疾病并提供有針對(duì)性的醫(yī)療時(shí)，它們需要避免在狹小的空間中被卡住。這時(shí)，按照上述結(jié)果，我們可以對(duì)它們?cè)O(shè)定一定的程序，讓其中的一些機(jī)器人只是靜靜地看著它的同伴去工作。

　　(全文共408個(gè)詞)

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