British Isles
| Use attributes for filter ! | |
| Highest point | Ben Nevis |
|---|---|
| Locations | Europe |
| Total islands | 6,000+ |
| Population | 71,881,243 (2018) |
| Did you know | Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles, and when combined with Northern Ireland, it makes up the United Kingdom. |
| Date of Reg. | |
| Date of Upd. | |
| ID | 405865 |
About British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic off the north-western coast of continental Europe that consist of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and over six thousand smaller isles.
Storm Ciarán eases but flood warnings remain
... Elsewhere across the British Isles, roofs were blown off homes, some train lines completely ground to a halt and there were long queues around the Port of Dover, which shut earlier amid rough seas...
Storm Ciarán: Flooding and damage hits homes across UK
...By Harrison Jones BBC NewsCommunities across the British Isles are reeling after Storm Ciarán battered homes and businesses...
Wales' Indiana Jones searching for lost mines in hills
... " Normally when you think of a Welsh mines, you think about a south Wales and coal, but in Ceredigion we have the oldest metal mines, known anywhere on the British Isles...
UK migratory birds 'in freefall' over climate change
... The number of wild birds in Britain has fallen by 73 million since 1970, according to the British Trust for Ornithology, which studies birds in the British Isles...
Antarctic sea-ice at 'mind-blowing' low alarms experts
... That s an area of missing ice about five times the size of the British Isles...
Rare tropical red-footed booby spotted near Isles of Scilly
... The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), which studies birds in the British Isles, said the warm weather might explain its presence...
Scientists buzzing with hopes for AI bee research
...By Huw WilliamsBBC Scotland reporterThere are more than 20 species of bumblebee in the British Isles...
Scottish ceremony sees King Charles tread a thin line
... The Crown Jewels - now the oldest regalia in the British Isles - proved resilient...
Scientists buzzing with hopes for AI bee research
By Huw WilliamsBBC Scotland reporter
There are More Than 20 Species of bumblebee in The British Isles . But some have gone extinct since The Second World War - and others are At Risk .
Now it is hoped teaching a computer to automatically identify threatened bees in The Wild could help conserve them.
Researchers need to teach The System to recognise The different buzzes every Species makes.
They do that by recording The Noise and adding comprehensive details of The bee that produced it.
Alixandra Prybyla, who's studying for a PhD at The University of Edinburgh, and her undergraduate colleague Eva Nelson have been searching for bees at The rich wildflower meadows round The Ring of Brodgar in Orkney.
The area is home to A Number of Species - including The Great yellow bumblebee, which is one of The rarest bumblebees in The British Isles .
Alixandra Prybyla told that you have to think of The Body of a bee as being " like a tiny musical instrument".
" In The same way that you would pluck a string on a guitar and a vibration would move through that string and into The Body of The Guitar , The same thing happens to a bumblebee" she says.
The Vibrations it makes when it flies are shaped in its body and are emitted as a unique sound.
So human ears can hear The difference, for example, between The low buzz produced by The relatively slow wing beats of a buff-tailed bumblebee queen and The much higher - almost whiny - Noise made by a small early bumblebee worker.
But more subtle or complex distinctions can only be detected using scientific instruments to analyse The frequencies The insects emit.
It would take a human researcher " thousands of hours" to work through all The possibilities. So Alixandra Prybyla and her students are employing Artificial Intelligence .
" We're recording thousands and thousands of bee sounds and taking all sorts of environmental data, all sorts of morphological data, and we're giving it to this Artificial Intelligence algorithm that we're programming, and teaching it. Teaching it what to look for. "
That means after they've recorded an individual They Live trap it in a net, chill it to put it into torpor - a hibernation state so it can be handled safely. They then identify, weigh and measure it, tag it, warm it up again and release it.
The Plan is to Build Up a database which links The Sounds with all those details, along with environmental information like how warm it is, how much pollen The Bees is carrying, and what time of year it is.
By measuring bees over The Course of their full season, she says, they should get a full picture of all The variables that can affect what a bee sounds like.
Bees make buzzes for all sorts of different reasons. Sonication is a high-pitched buzz to get flowers to release pollen and they also have aggression buzzes - which are communication buzzes.
But in order to make sure that The System is comparing like with like, they Focus On recording " foraging buzzes" - The Noise a bee makes as it goes from flower to flower.
In future it is hoped that The System will be able to recognise and analyse recordings generated automatically by microphones left in bee habitats.
" It can difficult, and time consuming to have experts go to all The different places and identify The Bees , do population examinations, and get The kind of data needed to do conservation interventions" Alixandra Prybyla says.
" So we're hoping that this technology can be deployed as something called a 'remote acoustic monitoring station'.
" You'd Set Up microphone arrays which would take in all sports of buzzes and automatically they could be identified. And if we notice concerning changes, or things that a researcher would flag if they were in The Field . We could come out and see what's going on. "
Source of news: bbc.com
