Most Valuable Company and Whale Song Studies

News Bites

Hi everyone, welcome to a new episode of News Bites! I'm Kelly Kimura… And I'm Paz Bueno. Coming up next in today's news: the most valuable public company in the world and how scientists are studying whale songs! And in today's Tasty Tidbit… do you know how your tongue tastes food? Stay tuned for more on those stories! ___________________________________________________________ 全球最有價值的上市公司 The World's Most Valuable Public Company Thirty-one years ago, a Taiwanese American electrical engineer (電機工程師) started a company with two other people. He was 30 years old and younger than the other two. But they wanted him to be the president and CEO (總裁和執行長). The early days of the company were not easy. Once, it only had enough money to pay its workers for one more month. After that, the CEO often started meetings by saying, "Our company is thirty days from going out of business." The company started doing better. The CEO liked video games. So his company made powerful (強大的) graphics cards (顯示卡). They made the images (圖像) in games look more real. To work very quickly, these cards do many calculations (計算) at the same time. Other cards do one calculation at a time. They are much slower. A graduate student (研究生) made a supercomputer (超級電腦) by connecting (連接) many of the company's graphics cards together! The company began to make software (軟體) and chips (晶片) for supercomputing (超級計算). But did many companies need supercomputing? Maybe they did, but they didn't know this. The company's business was slow. A few years later, a researcher used the company's supercomputing software to train (訓練) software to recognize (認出) people's voices. Then the researcher's student used the supercomputing software to train software to recognize images. These were the beginning of AI systems (人工智慧系統). These systems need to do many calculations at the same time. The CEO changed the company's products to help other companies make AI systems. Then the company's supercomputer trained an AI chatbot (聊天機器人). This chatbot is very, very popular. Anyone can use it. And the AI boom started! The company soon became the second most valuable public company (第二大最有價值上市公司) in the world. Then last week, the company became the world's MOST valuable public company. It's the third company with a value (價值) of $3 trillion (兆) US dollars or more. Last week, it had a value of $3.3 trillion US dollars. That's over 106 trillion Taiwan dollars! The company does not make its products. It has strong ties to Taiwan, with about 100 suppliers (供應商) here. 這位執行長表示，台灣「處於世界技術供應鏈的中心」。 Do you know the name of the company and its CEO? ___________________________________________________________ 科學家如何研究鯨魚唱歌 How Scientists Are Studying Whale Songs Marine biologists (海洋生物學家) and computer scientists (電腦科學家) are working together on whale songs. They want to find out what sperm whale (抹香鯨) songs mean. These whales have the biggest brain (腦) of all living animals. They're also the loudest animal! One of the marine biologists recorded sperm whale songs with underwater microphones (麥克風) for many years. The group has thousands of hours of songs to study! Sperm whale songs are clicks (點擊聲). The whales make clicks when they're swimming together. Sometimes the whales click more quickly. Then other whales also click more quickly. The clicks sound like a code (碼). One pattern sounds like this: Click…, click…, click, click, click. For a long time, the marine biologists thought there were about 30 patterns (模式). They thought of the clicks as points on a line (一條線上的點). But a computer science graduate student didn't like looking at the clicks this way. She arranged (整理) the clicks differently. The new arrangement let her see that there were many, many more click patterns. The scientists think whales are saying something different when they change the speed or the rhythm (韻律) of their clicks. Now the marine biologists are putting tags (標籤) on the sperm whales they're studying. This lets the scientists know where a whale is when it sings. They can also get video images that show how it is behaving (為人). They want to find if there is a connection between what whales sing and how they behave. The computer scientists are also training AI software with the whale songs. Maybe AI can find out more about the clicks. The scientists want AI to write whale songs one day. Then they'll play the songs to the whales! Hmmmm… what would these songs say? ___________________________________________________________ So in today's News Bites: A Taiwanese American is the CEO of a US company that made very fast and powerful graphics cards for gaming. They made AI systems possible. The company changed its products to help other companies make AI systems. ___________________________________________________________ And… Marine biologists and computer scientists are working to find what sperm whale songs mean. A graduate student found many new patterns in the songs. The computer scientists are training AI software with the whale songs to find out more about them. ___________________________________________________________ 趣味小點 Tasty Tidbit The tongue (舌頭) has taste receptors (味覺感受器) for sweet on the tip (舌尖), salty and then sour (酸的) on the sides, bitter (苦的) on the back, and umami (鮮味) on the center. That's what kids in the U.S. learn. But that's wrong! There are no taste receptors for only sweet, salty, sour, bitter, OR umami. For example, you can taste sweetness (甜味) more easily with the taste receptors on your tongue tip. But you can also taste the other four tastes. That means if you put something sour on your tongue tip, you can taste sourness (酸味). Scientists are still learning about taste. Some scientists think that there may be a taste receptor for fat (脂肪). Now they're researching how this receptor finds fat, a really tasty tidbit! ___________________________________________________________ And that's it for today's episode of News Bites! If you have a fun fact, a joke, or interesting news you'd like to share with us, record your message and send your Tasty Tidbit to us at [e-mail]. You might hear it at the end of an episode! We'll see you next time for an exciting new episode of News Bites!