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
Science Fiction? Not Any More Science fiction has often been the source of inspiration for new technologies. The exoskeleton
Science Fiction? Not Any More Science fiction has often been the source of inspiration for new technologies. The exoskeleton
admin
2011-01-15
54
问题
Science Fiction? Not Any More
Science fiction has often been the source of inspiration for new technologies. The exoskeletons and head-mounted displays featured in the film "Aliens", for example, spawned a number of militaryfunded projects to try to create similar technologies. Automatic sliding doors might never have become popular had they not appeared on the television series "Star Trek". And the popularity of flip-top or "clamshell" mobile phones may stem from the desire to look like Captain Kirk flipping open his communicator on the same program.
Now it seems that "Star Trek" has done it again. This month, American soldiers in Iraq will begin trials of a device inspired by the "comm badge" featured in "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Like crew members of the starship Enterprise, soldiers will be able to talk to other members of their unit just by tapping and then speaking into a small badge worn on the chest. What sets the comm badge apart from a mere walkie-talkie, and appeals to "Star Trek" fans, is the system’s apparent intelligence. It works out who you are calling from spoken commands, and connects you instantly.
The system, developed by Vocera Communications of Cupertino, California, uses a combination of Wi-Fi wireless networking and Voice-overInternet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to link up the badges via a central server, akin to a switchboard. The badges are already being used in 80 large institutions, most of them hospitals, to replace overhead paging systems, says Brent Lang, Vocera’s vice-president.
Like its science-fiction counterpart, the badge is designed so that all functions can be carded out by pressing a single button. On pressing it, the caller gives a command and specifies the name of a person or group of people, such as "call Dr. Smith" or "locate the nearest anesthesiologist". Voice-recognition software interprets the commands and locates the appropriate person or group, based on whichever Wi-Fi base-station they are closest to. The person receiving the call then hears an audible alert stating the name of the caller and, if he or she wishes to take the call, responds by tapping the badge and starting to speak.
That highlights a key difference between the "Star Trek" comm badge and the real-life version: A Vocera’s implementation allows people to reject incoming calls, rather than having the voice of the caller patched through automatically. B But even the most purist fans can forgive Vocera for deviating from the script in this way, says David Batchelor, an astrophysicist and "Star Trek" enthusiast at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. C For there are, he notes, some curious aspects to the behavior of the comm badges in "Star Trek". D When the captain of the Enterprise says "Picard to sick-bay: Medical emergency on the bridge", for example, his badge somehow connects him to the sick-bay before he has stated the destination of the call.
Allowing badge users to reject incoming calls if they are busy, rather than being connected instantly, was a feature added at the request of customers, says Mr. Lang. But in almost all other respects the badges work just like their fictional counterparts. This is not very surprising, says Lawrence Krauss, an astrophysicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the author of "The Physics of Star Trek". In science fiction, and particularly in "Star Trek", most problems have technological fixes. Sometimes, it seems, those fixes can be applied to real-world problems too.
Vocera’s system is particularly well suited to hospitals, says Christine Tarver, a clinical manager at E1 Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California. It allows clinical staff to reach each other far more quickly than with beepers and overhead pagers. A recent study carried out at St. Agnes Healthcare in Baltimore, Maryland, assessed the amount of time spent by clinical staff trying to get hold of each other, both before and after the installation of the Vocera system. It concluded that the badges would save the staff a total of 3,400 hours each year.
Nursing staff often end up playing phone tag with doctors, which wastes valuable time, says Ms Tamer. And although people using the badges sometimes look as though they are talking to themselves, she says, many doctors prefer it because it enables them to deal with queries more efficiently. The system can also forward calls to mobile phones; it can be individually trained to ensure that it understands users with strong accents; and it can even be configured with personalized ring tones.
In Iraq, soldiers will use the Vocera badges in conjunction with base-stations mounted on Humvee armored vehicles. Beyond medical and military uses, Vocera hopes to sell the technology to retailers and hotels. And the firm’s engineers are now extending the system to enable the badges to retrieve stored information, such as patient records or information about a particular drag, in response to spoken commands. Their inspiration? Yet another "Star Trek" technology: the ship’s talking, ship’s computer.
According to the passage, Why is Vocera’s system particularly suitable for hospitals?
选项
A、Improves efficiency.
B、Save money.
C、Improve quality.
D、Is useful.
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/y2yO777K
0
托福(TOEFL)
相关试题推荐
Youshouldspendabout20minutesonQuestions1-13,whicharebasedonReadingPassage1below.G
Youshouldspendabout20minutesonQuestions27-40,whicharebasedonReadingPassage3below.Thefu
ChoosethecorrectletterA,B,CorD.Writeyouranswersinboxes37-40onyouranswersheet.Duringtheearlymodernera,a
Lookatthefollowingresearchers(Questions19-22)andthelistoffindingsbelow.Matcheachresearcherwiththecorrectfinding
TheHistoryoftheGuitarTheword’guitar’wasbroughtintoEnglishasanadaptationoftheSpanishword’guitarra,’whichwas,
TheHistoryoftheGuitarTheword’guitar’wasbroughtintoEnglishasanadaptationoftheSpanishword’guitarra,’whichwas,
Matcheachstatementwiththecorrectorganisation,A-G.ListofOrganisationsAExplorationArchitectureBDESERTECCABBPower
WhichthreeforeignlanguagesaretraditionallytaughtintheUSA?WhatpercentageofEuropeansspeakasecondlanguage?
Completethenotesbelow.WriteNOMORETHANTWOWORDSAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswerENVIRONMENTALCHANGEDISCUSSIONInSouthe
随机试题
男性,30岁。呼吸困难2天就诊,发病前有鼻痒,喷嚏。继往有类似病史。体检:呼吸20次/分,双肺可闻及呼气末哮鸣音,心率96次/分,律齐。最可能的诊断是
在证券清算和价款清算中,可以合并计算的包括()。
原材料账户的贷方反映的是()。
某县土管局公务员黄某在工作中弄虚作假,欺骗领导,被该局给予记过的行政处分,黄某不服,可以采取的救济方式有()。
越来越多的年轻观众对京剧缺乏了解,不懂得欣赏京剧的美;还有一部分人对舶来品________,认为都比国内的好,对于自己国家的传统艺术,却认为是老土的、过时的东西,而________。依次填入划横线部分最恰当的一项是:
Theinformationintheformmaycomefrom______.FortwostudentsadDwouldbemoreeconomicalthanadCbecause______.
设f(χ,y)=讨论函数f(χ,y)在点(0,0)处的连续性与可偏导性.
InaswitchedLANnetwork,whatistheSpanning-Treealgorithmusedfor?A.Itisusedtoprovideamechanismforroutingupdate
存储容量是磁盘驱动器的重要技术指标,下列( )与磁盘存储器的容量无关。
A、protestthegovernment’scrackdownonitsopponentsB、defytheattempttoassassinatePresidentAugustoPinochetC、celebratet
最新回复
(
0
)