SSS 2008-06-05

（单词翻译）

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I am Karen Hopkin. This'll just take a minute.

Biologists, traditionally track migrations² by tagging animals with devices that allow their movements to be monitored. But Homo sapiens can't be fitted with radio collars, at least not without making them feel self-conscious and absurd.It's not exactly Big Brother. But if you have a cellphone, scientists in Boston may be watching you, or at least, using your cellphone records to see where you go. Because people carry and use their phones every day, they provide a great way for researchers to get a handle on human migration¹. The Boston scientists looked at records from 100,000 cellphone users over a 6-month period. And they pinpointed³ people's positions based on which transmission towers handled their calls. They found that humans truly are creatures of habit: they tend to make regular trips to the same few locations like work, home, or the local Pizza place. The results appeared in the June 5th issue of the journal Nature. Getting a good fix on people's comings and goings could help predict traffic patterns, or even prevent epidemics⁴.Those same phone records show that Ray’s famous original pizza is clearly the human's first choice.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, and I am Karen Hopkin.