关键信息：研究人员正在利用人工智能技术，将英国各地收藏的数百万件标本数字化，从而建立一个庞大的数字博物馆。他们认为这一举措将极大地提升我们对自然世界的认识。
Researchers are using AI to create a vast digital museum of millions of specimens from collections across the UK that they say could "supercharge" our understanding of the natural world.
未来，人们可以通过手机或电脑查看大约7000万件动物、植物、化石和岩石的资料。
People will eventually be able to see around 70 million animals, plants, fossils and rocks from their phones and computers.
机器人和人工智能被用于扫描和分析这些标本（其中一些标本的采集时间可追溯至几个世纪前），大大加快了数字化进程（从原本需要数百年的时间缩短到了十年）。
Robots and AI are being used to scan and analyse the specimens - some collected centuries ago - speeding up the digitisation process from hundreds of years to a decade.
这个新的数字博物馆将帮助研究人员了解英国在整个地球历史中的变化情况，并预测未来气候、食物供应和物种流失的趋势。
The new digital museum will enable researchers to understand how the UK has changed over the entire history of our planet and predict future changes to the climate, food supplies and species loss.
该项目由英国研究与创新机构（UK Research and Innovation Agency）下属的艺术与人文研究委员会（Arts and Humanities Research Council, AHRC）资助。该委员会的研究主任乔安娜·邓斯特（Joanna Dunster）表示：“我很期待能和我的四岁儿子一起探索这个资源库——虽然他对科学的知识了解不多，但他的热情非常高。”
The resource will be something that the public can access and enjoy too, says Dr Joanna Dunster, who is an associate director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) - part of the UK Research and Innovation Agency which is funding the project. "I'm looking forward to exploring the resource with my four-year-old son, whose knowledge of science is little, but enthusiasm is great," she told BBC News.
目前，数据库中已有一些标本可供查询，但这些标本仅占英国所有标本的一小部分，主要来自自然历史博物馆（Natural History Museum）和邱园（Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew）等少数大型机构。
Some specimens are already searchable on the database, but they represent only a fraction of the country's collections, mostly from a handful of large institutions such as the Natural History Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
新的资金支持将使英国各地的科研机构能够进一步开放他们的藏品，从而将更多植物、动物和化石纳入数据库。
New funding will open drawers and cupboards in institutions across the UK to include millions more plants, animals and fossils.
邓斯特强调：“我们必须让这些珍贵的藏品能够被公众和研究人员自由访问，而不是让它们被束之高阁、难以被人们发现。”
"We need to make these collections openly accessible instead of sitting where they can rarely be reached," Dunster said.
通过这个数字博物馆，公众和研究人员将能够了解到自然界的全部多样性——从那些生活在海底、依靠特殊结构支撑身体的奇特生物，到查尔斯·达尔文在1833年于阿根廷东北部发现的那颗马牙化石等具有历史意义的标本。
The public and researchers will be able to see the full diversity of the natural world, from the unusual - like the blind tripod fish that props itself on the seafloor, to the historical - a horse tooth recovered by Charles Darwin around 1833 from northeast Argentina.
该项目名为科学馆藏分布式系统（DiSSCo UK），由自然历史博物馆牵头。
The resource is called the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo UK) and is led by the Natural History Museum.
扫描标本并非一件简单的事。每件标本都需要拍摄，其中带有重要科学信息的微小标签也必须记录下来；这些标签往往采用手写方式书写，有些已有数百年历史。
Scanning the specimens is not a trivial process. Not only does each one need to be photographed, but the tiny labels containing important scientific information, often handwritten, sometimes centuries ago, also have to be recorded.
参与该项目的团队估算，如果全程依靠人工，这项工作需要数百年才能完成；但借助机器人和人工智能，如今十年左右就能完成。DiSSCo UK项目交付总监萨拉·阿德佐里奥表示：“我们现在能够以前所未有的规模连接并分析这些信息，而过去根本无法做到。”该项目共有100家博物馆、植物园、大学及其他机构参与。
The team involved calculated that it would have taken hundreds of years to do this manually, but using robots and AI this process can now be done in a decade, according to Sarah Addezio, the DiSSCo UK's programme delivery director. "What we're able to do now is connect and analyse that information at a scale that's unprecedented and has not been possible before." One hundred museums, botanic gardens, universities and other organisations are involved in the project.
首批接受扫描的并不是那些大型标本：项目启动阶段将率先在威尔士和苏格兰展开，其中没有鲸鱼或恐龙等巨型标本。
The specimens to go under the cameras will not be the big beasties: there are no whales or dinosaurs in the opening phase, which begins in Wales and Scotland.
率先接受扫描的将是甲虫、蝴蝶、飞蛾、苍蝇、压制花卉标本和蕨类——这些体积较小、不那么引人注目的材料，实际上最完整地记录了周边环境的变化。
Beetles, butterflies, moths, flies, pressed flowers and ferns will go first - the small, less glamorous material that actually hold the best record of how the country around them has changed.
在卡迪夫，团队将扫描约50万件昆虫和植物标本，从体型较大、色彩艳丽的蝴蝶，到小到落在指尖上都会看不见的苍蝇；事实证明，苍蝇是衡量生态环境健康程度最敏感的指标之一。
In Cardiff, the team will scan around half a million insect and plant specimens, from large, showy butterflies down to flies you could lose on a fingertip, which turn out to be among the most sensitive indicators of a healthy landscape.
在苏格兰，爱丁堡皇家植物园和苏格兰国立博物馆合计收藏1300万件标本，是英国规模第二大的自然科学馆藏。
In Scotland, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland hold 13 million specimens between them, the UK's second-largest natural science collection.
加上苏格兰其他50家规模较小的馆藏机构，这些收藏覆盖了从海平面到高山之巅的各类苏格兰景观，呈现了两个世纪以来当地植物和昆虫的变化。
Together with 50 smaller Scottish collections, the collections span from sea level to the tops of mountains - two centuries of change in the plants and insects of every kind of Scottish landscape.
威尔士博物馆自然科学与研究主管珍妮·杰罗尼表示，这将是展示全英国各地藏品的一次难得机会。
Jenny Geroni, who is the head of Natural Sciences and Research at the Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, said it will be a chance to showcase material from across the country.
每个收藏都是独一无二的。我们拥有大量其他地方都没有收藏的威尔士材料。
"Each collection is unique. We have a lot of Welsh material that is not held anywhere else.
“通过收集来自英国各地的实物，我们还可以勾勒出整个国家正在发生什么。而当每个人都加入自己的世界收藏时，就能更清晰地呈现出其他地方正在发生的情况。”杰罗尼告诉BBC新闻。博物馆里的每一件标本都是过去的一张快照。
"By taking material from across the UK, it also allows us to build a good picture of what is going on across the whole country. And everyone adding their world collections will build a much stronger picture of what is going on elsewhere," Geroni told BBC News. Every specimen in a museum is a snapshot of the past.
自然史研究在很大程度上就像一场侦探故事：从数千万块这样的拼图碎片中拼合线索，重现一幅生动而详尽的图景，呈现我们的世界如何发生变化。
A large part of natural history is the detective story of piecing these clues together from tens of millions of these jigsaw pieces to recreate a vivid and detailed picture of how our world has changed.
这项新倡议将把数百万件标本汇集起来，并配备强大的人工智能工具来检索相关信息，从而使这项工作容易得多。
The new initiative will make that much easier by bringing millions of specimens together along with powerful AI tools to search the information.
伦敦自然历史博物馆研究负责人文森特·史密斯博士表示，这将“为自然世界研究注入强大动力”。
Dr Vincent Smith, a research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, says it will "supercharge" research into the natural world.
“自然历史收藏记录了漫长的变化时期，往往涵盖一些真正具有根本意义的时期，例如工业革命。我们的收藏勾勒出这些变化，因此你可以看到此前发生过什么。”他说。更关键的是，他补充说，还可以“开始预测接下来会发生什么”。
"Natural history collections record long periods of change, often through really fundamental periods, such as the Industrial Revolution. Our collections chart those changes and so you can see what's happened before," he said. And, crucially, he added "start to predict what's going to happen next".
DiSSCo UK还将通过上传更多化石和岩石材料，帮助科学家为未来挑战做好准备，并助力研究绿色技术所需的矿物。
DiSSCo UK will also help scientists prepare for future challenges - by uploading more fossils and rock material it will aid research into minerals needed for green technology.