Wisconsin is famous for cheese. But it’s also the United States’ number-one producer of a tart, red fruit that’s on pretty much every Thanksgiving dinner table.

　　威斯康星州以奶酪闻名，同时它也是美国第一大红果塔的产地——几乎每家感恩节的餐桌上都会有这种水果。

　　"We have this reputation of being the dairy state, but cranberries outnumber the cows." Susan Hagness, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

　　“我们的乳制品非常出名，但是蔓越莓的数量超过了奶制品。”威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的电子工程师Susan Hagness说。

　　Cranberries, she says, are big business—they’re the official state fruit! And supply chain managers need estimates of the size of the upcoming harvest. Which can be hard to make.

　　她表示，蔓越莓是一笔大买卖——它们是官方指定水果!供应链经理需要对未来的收成进行测算，但这很难测算出来。

　　"The current approach for estimating cranberry yield is literally to go out into the field and hand pick and hand count all the cranberries in a one-square-foot area. This is obviously an inefficient and laborious approach. There can be up to 900 berries per square foot."

　　“目前估算蔓越莓产量的办法就是到地里去，对一平方英尺的蔓越莓进行手工实地采摘和手工计数，这明显是个效率低、还费工夫的办法。因为，每平方英尺可以产出900个果子。”

　　So scientists from Ocean Spray asked Hagness for help. And she and her team found in lab tests that zapping cranberry plants with microwaves, and then studying the signal that bounces back, might work. Recall that your microwave oven works by exciting water molecules in whatever you’re heating up. Same concept here: microwaves interact differently with plump, juicy cranberries—which contain lots of water—than they do with leaves. The return signal thus provides a good estimate of the number of cranberry clusters in a given plot.

　　所以，来自Ocean Spray的科学家向Hagness寻求帮助。她和团队成员们在实验测试中发现，用微波对蔓越莓进行刺激，研究反射回来的信号，可能会起作用。回想你用微波炉加热东西时，会刺激里面的水分子，不管你加热的是什么。同样的理论：和与蔓越莓的叶子相互作用相比，微波与圆润、多汁的蔓越莓果作用不同，果子含有大量的水分，发射回来的信号可以很好地估计设定的蔓越莓群的数量。

　　By the way, the microwaves for this application are very low power—on par with the radiation that comes out of a cell phone. "You know we’re not cooking the cranberries right there in the field."

　　顺便说一下，这种应用的微波能量很低——与手机的辐射同等水平。“你知道，我们并不会在田野里加工蔓越莓。”

　　The team presented their preliminary results at an IEEE conference earlier this year.

　　今年早些时候，这个团队在IEEE会议上展现了初期研究成果。

　　Since then they’ve moved from the lab to the bog—they’re currently analyzing data from tests done during this year’s crop. If the method holds up, it might give cranberry growers something to be thankful for.

　　自那时起，他们从实验室转战到了田地里——当下他们正在分析来自今年作物的实验数据。如果此种方法证实有效，那可能会让蔓越莓种植者非常感激。