首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Countless medical studies have concluded that playing too many video games can be harmful to one’s health. Now, however, it turn
Countless medical studies have concluded that playing too many video games can be harmful to one’s health. Now, however, it turn
admin
2011-01-08
79
问题
Countless medical studies have concluded that playing too many video games can be harmful to one’s health. Now, however, it turns out that one of the more popular video-game consoles on the market, the Xbox 360, could be used to save lives.
A computer scientist at the University of Warwick in England has devised a way to use an Xbox 360 to detect heart defects and help prevent heart attacks. The new tool has the potential to revolutionize the medical industry because it is both faster and cheaper than the computer systems that are currently used by scientists to perform complex heart research.
The system, detailed in a study in the August edition of the Journal of Computational Biology and Chemistry, is based on a video-game demo created by Simon Scarle two years ago when he was a software engineer at Microsoft’s Rare studio, the division of the U.S.-based company that designs games for the Xbox 360. Scarle modified a chip in the console so that instead of producing graphics for the game, it now delivers data tracking how electrical signals in the heart move around damaged cardiac cells. This creates a model of the heart that allows doctors to identify heart defects or conditions such as arrhythmia, a disturbance in the normal rhythm of the heart that causes it to pump less effectively.
"This is a clever use of a processing chip ... to speed up calculations of heart rhythm.
What used to take hours can be calculated in seconds, without having to employ an extremely expensive, high-performance computer," Denis Noble, director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University, tells TIME.
To create a heart model now, researchers must use supercomputers or a network of PCs to crunch millions of mathematical equations relating to the proteins, cells and tissues of the heart, a time-consuming and costly process. Scarle’s Xbox system can deliver the same results at a rate five times faster and 10 times more cheap, according to the study.
"These game consoles aren’t just glorified toys. [They] are pieces of very powerful computing hardware," Scarle says. "I can see this ... being most useful for student sand early-career scientists to just quickly and cheaply grab that extra bit of computing power they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get."
Scarle attributes his breakthrough creation to his unusual background of working as a software engineer in the gaming industry and performing electrocardio-dynamics research at the University of Sheffield in England. The idea for the heart-modeling tool came from a "little shooter game" he developed at Microsoft in which a player tries to gun down enemies in an arena meant to resemble a heart. "I did a game-ified version of my old cardiac code. I could actually present some ’proper’ science [based on] the cool things us game developers do," Scarle says.
The Xbox 360 isn’t the only video-game console that is being used for scientific research. At the University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth, scientists are using Sony PlayStations to simulate black-hole collisions to try to solve the mystery of what happens when a super massive black hole swallows a star.
So perhaps parents shouldn’t be too worried if their children are spending an inordinate amount of time playing video games. Who knows, today’s Grand Theft Auto or Halo addict may end up discovering a new moon around Saturn or finding a cure for cancer.
Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
选项
A、Xbox: A Kind of New Video Games
B、Xbox: A Kind of Magical Video Games
C、How Xbox Can Help Fight Heart Disease
D、Playing Video Games Can Benefit Children
答案
C
解析
此题是推理概括题。文章主题是如何使用Xbox来诊断心脏疾病,故选项C为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/djeO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Inthelate1960smanypeopleinNorthAmericaturnedtheirattentiontoenvironmentalproblems,andnewsteel-and-glassskyscra
TheDeathofaSpouseFormuchoftheworld,thedeathofRichardNixonwastheendofacomplexpubliclife.Butresearchers
EducationalValuesDuringthefirstweekatNorthAmericanuniversities,studentsmustdoafewthingsinpreparation,solif
Britain’sSystemofEducationTheBritishCommonwealthincludesaquarteroftheworld’spopulationinone-sixthoftheworld
Whiteneighborhoodsarebecomingdarkerin【1】______andmoreexpensive.【1】______Analystssaythatsoaringhousepricesandboom
Mymother’srelationswereverydifferentfromtheMitfords.Herbrother,UncleGeoff,whooftencametostayatSwinbrook,was
Literatureisameansbywhichweknowourselves.Byitwemeet【M1】_______.futureselves,andrecognizepastselves;
Artcanbemadeofalmostanything,includingsubstances【M1】_______thathavenotbeenproducedandusedinages,a
Thecostsassociatedwithnaturaldisastersareincreasingrapidly.Asaresult,officialsingovernmentandindustryhavefocus
Manysystemcanbedeliberatelyfooled.AnewstudyfromYokohamaNationalUniversityinJapanshowsthatphonyfingersconcocte
随机试题
中国共产党在大革命失败后,将工作重心由城市转向农村,标志着向农村进军的新起点是【】
Americansocietyisnotnap(午睡)-friendly.Infact,saysDavidDinges,asleepspecialistattheUniversityofPennsylvanianScho
患者外伤后胁肋疼痛难忍,痛处固定而拒按,脉弦。治宜选用
A、痉挛性偏瘫步态B、醉酒步态C、慌张步态D、蹒跚步态E、间歇性跛行佝偻病患者多见
PDCA循环具有()特点。GB/T19000-2000族标准质量管理的系统方法包括()。
附有证书的牛奶检定参照物(该奶粉具有确定的成分)
甲公司诉乙公司经济纠纷一案经人民法院审判并于2002年10月10日发生法律效力,法律文书规定的履行最后期限为2002年10月20日。若乙公司不履行该生效的法律文书,甲公司申请执行的期限是()。
在老年人的认知和情绪问题中,突发性意识障碍常表现为()。
建筑与雕塑都是占有三维空间的造型艺术,但是建筑在哪些方面有别于雕塑?
以下关系表达式中,其值为True的是______。
最新回复
(
0
)