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Making Use of Jellyfish on Dry Land 在陆地上运用水母的妙法

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In this interview, John Dabiri, assistant professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at Caltech, tells us why he is fascinated by jellyfish   在这次访谈中，加州理工学院航空学与生物工程学助理教授约翰．达比里娓娓道出他深受水母所吸引的原因

Q: What’s the connection between engineering and jellyfish?

问：工程学与水母之间有什么关连呢？

A: When you look at fluid flows …. they can all be described by the same equations. The math and the physics don’t really care whether you’re talking about an airplane, a jellyfish or the human heart. So you can start to understand, for example, what makes a jellyfish efficient, and then use that information to design submarines that are more efficient, or diagnose when the heart is no longer performing efficiently.

答：考虑流体的流动时……其实这些都可以用相同的方程式来描述。数学和物理并不真的在乎所讨论的对象究竟是飞机、水母或是人类心脏。举例来说，你可以着手去了解水母之所以如此有效率的原因，然后再用所得的信息来设计出更有效率的潜水艇，或是诊断何时起心脏将无法再有效率地运作。

Q: Tell us some of what you’ve learned about how jellyfish move.

问：请告诉我们，你从水母移动的方式理解出哪些知识。

A: For a long time, people thought of jellyfish swimming as like jet propulsion – like a rocket that shoots out exhaust and goes the other way. But it’s a bit more subtle than that. They create vortex rings, like the smoke rings you might create with a cigar. And those doughnut-shaped swirls of water are an efficient way of propulsion because [the animals] can basically push off of those doughnuts of water.

答：长久以来，人们一直以为水母悠游的方式是像喷射推进一样──宛如火箭喷出废气，然后朝相反的方向行进。但其实个中原因比这个说法更加微妙。水母（游的时候）会制造出涡旋圈，就像抽雪茄时所出现的烟圈一样，而这些甜甜圈形状的水旋涡就是一种有效率的推进法，因为这些动物基本上就是靠这些圈状水来游开的。

We wanted to understand how they form these swirling currents, and whether we could build underwater vehicles that could also create these same type of water currents while they propelled themselves.

我们希望了解的是，牠们究竟如何形成这类旋涡水流，再看看我们是否也能打造出水中交通工具，同样能在自我推进时产生同类的水流。

Q: What is it about jellyfish that you were drawn to?

问：水母哪点最吸引你？

A: At the beginning, it was just their simplicity. They’re about the simplest things you can think of – it looks like they are just kind of floating around.

答：起初，我只是欣赏牠们的简单。牠们是人能想象得到的最简单的东西了──看起来好像只是四处漂浮着。

It turns out they do have these interesting fluid dynamics, but we only learned this after we started measuring their fluid flow, using different visualization techniques. The problem when you try to study water flow is that it’s pretty much transparent. You can put dye in the water around the animals. The animals will swim through, and then you’ll be able to see the water currents they create while they’re swimming.

但其实牠们拥有引人入胜的流体力学，而我们是在利用不同的构思技巧，开始测量牠们的流体流动后，才发现这点的。试图研究水流所遭遇的问题是，水几乎是透明的。但可以把染料加入动物周遭的水中，而动物会游过去，然后就能看到牠们在游水时所产生的水流了。

…. With the smaller animals, you can do this in a lab. But grad students in my lab and my collaborators will go out to the field and go scuba diving with them.

……对体型比较小的动物来说，可以在实验室里进行。但我实验室里的研究生和合作伙伴则会出外进行田野调查，大家一起水肺潜水。

单词发音

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aeronautics [͵ɛrəˋnɔtɪks] n. 航空学[术]

bioengineering [͵baɪo͵ɛndʒəˋnɪrɪŋ] n. 生物工程学

propulsion [prəˋpʌlʃən] n. 推进（力）

vortex [ˋvɔrtɛks] (名复: vortexes,vortices) n. 旋涡；涡流

push off 【口】离开; 走开 to leave

课文朗读

课文讲解

Q: To inform engineering, would your research only work with jellyfish?

问：为了取得工程学上的相关知识，你的研究会不会只以水母为对象？

A: These vortex rings show up in other animals. So you could have picked a trout, let’s say, or a shark.

答：其他动物也会出现这类涡旋圈。所以也可以选择鳟鱼，或是鲨鱼。

They have more complicated wake flow patterns: The shape of their fins and the way they move is just more complicated. So, if you were to do that dye experiment it would be messier, and harder to interpret.

但牠们的尾流流动模式更为复杂：鱼鳍的形状和牠们移动的方式就是更为复杂。所以如果用染料来进行实验的话．就会变得更加乱糟糟的，而且更难加以诠释。

Q: What’s the next phase of your research?

问：你研究的下一个阶段是什么？

A: The bigger picture for our lab is a field of what we call bio-inspired engineering – we study different biological systems and try to understand what they do well and what they aren’t able to do well, then apply that knowledge to engineering systems.

答：我们实验室的大方向是称为生物启发工程的领域，我们研究不同的生物系统，然后试图了解它们擅长及不擅长之处，然后再把所得的知识运用在工程系统中。

Recently, we’ve been doing work in wind energy to find an alternative to the very large propeller-style windmills. These require lots of land, because you have to space them far apart so the wakes of the turbines don’t interact with one another.

最近，我们正进行用风力来寻找能取代大型推动式风车的替代方案，这类风车需要占用大面积的土地，因为风车的间隔必须很远，彼此涡轮的尾流才不会互相干扰。

We’ve been interested in how many smaller structures could be situated very close together in order to generate as much power as you get from the very large ones. We were able to learn something about this from how fish school.

许多更小型的结构可以紧密地置放在一起以便产生和超大型结构相等的能源，我们对此很感兴趣。我们从鱼结成群的方式中能了解一些信息。

Fish like trout or tuna or mackerel will often swim in groups in pretty regular patterns. One of the leading hypotheses is that the individual fish can interact with the vortices that are being shed by the tails of their neighbors and use less energy as a group than [by] going individually through the water.

像鳟鱼、鲔鱼或鲭鱼往往会以相当规律的模式而成群结队地游。最重要的假设之一，便是个别的鱼儿能和紧临的鱼儿尾端所产生的涡旋互动，而且成群的方式所耗用的能量也会比各自在水中游来得更少。

We tested a mathematical model to describe what arrangement of the fish in a school works for this energy savings – except instead of fish, we had these wind turbines. We … were able to show that using this bio-inspired design for this wind farm, we could actually perform much better than existing technologies that are out there.

我们针对一个数学模型进行测试，以描述鱼群中鱼儿彼此间的哪种游水位置能产生这种节能效果──不过，除了鱼之外，还有风力涡轮。我们运用这种生物启发的风车场设计而得以显示出，这实际上的表现远比目前已有的现行科技还更好。

The systems don’t need to be identical for you to learn from them.

不一定非得有相同的体系才能从中学到知识。

－by Lori Kozlowski

单词发音

More Information

show up 出现 to appear

trout [traʊt] n. 鳟鱼

wake [wek] n. 尾迹, 痕迹

space [spes] v. 在……留出间隔；隔开

mackerel [ˋmækərəl] n. 鲭，青鱼，青花鱼

shed [ʃɛd] v. 流出；流下 to diffuse or radiate; send forth or impart

turbine [ˋtɝbɪn] n. 涡轮

单词发音

Vocabulary Focus

equation [ɪˋkweʃən] n.【数】方程式 a mathematical statement showing that two amounts, or two symbols or groups of symbols representing an amount, are equal

subtle [ˋsʌt!] adj. 微妙的 not very noticeable or obvious

swirl [swɝl] n. 涡流；漩涡 a twisting circular movement

visualization [͵vɪʒʊəlɪˋzeʃən] n. 想象 the act of picturing someone or something in one’s mind, in order to imagine them

inform [ɪnˋfɔrm] v. 使熟悉; 知道 to communicate information or facts

inspired [ɪnˋspaɪrd] adj. 得到启示的 describing who or what provided the idea for something

alternative [ɔlˋtɝnətɪv] n. 供选择的东西（或办法等）; 替代方案 something that is different from something else

situate [ˋsɪtʃʊ͵et] v. 使位于, 使处 于in a particular position

school [skul] v. 成群地游 for a large number of fish or other sea animals to orient together in a synchronized fashion and swim in a group; to form such a group

hypothesis [haɪˋpɑθəsɪs] n. 假设; 假说 an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved

Jellyfish in close-up