I was offered a position as associate professor of medicine and chief of scientific visualization at Yale University in the department of medicine. And my job was to write many of the algorithms and code for NASA to do virtual surgery in preparation for the astronauts going into deep-space flight, so they could be kept in robotic pods. One of the fascinating things about what we were working on is that we were seeing, using new scanning technologies, things that had never been seen before. Not only in disease management, but also things that allowed us to see things about the body that just made you marvel.
我曾被耶鲁大学的医学系 提供了 一个副教授和 科学可视化主任的职位 我的工作是为美国国家航天局NASA写 帮助NASA做虚拟手术用的程序和算法 虚拟手术用于为深空宇航飞行做准备的宇航员 好把他们封在机器人一样的外壳里 我们工作中很吸引人的一件事就是 我们能利用最新的扫描科到 看到从前根本无法看到的东西 —— 我意思是,不只是病菌和疾病有关系的 还可以看到 令人惊叹的人体
I remember one of the first times we were looking at collagen. And your entire body, everything -- your hair, skin, bone, nails -- everything is made of collagen. And it's a kind of rope-like structure that twirls and swirls like this. And the only place that collagen changes its structure is in the cornea of your eye. In your eye, it becomes a grid formation, and therefore, it becomes transparent, as opposed to opaque. So perfectly organized a structure, it was hard not to attribute divinity to it. Because we kept on seeing this in different parts of the body.
我记得有一次我们在研究胶原蛋白 整个人体,所有的东西 你的头发、皮肤、骨头、指甲 …… 所有的东西都是胶原蛋白组成的。 它是有绳子一样的结构 像这样拧来拧去的 而胶原蛋白唯一改变结构的地方 就在眼角膜里。 在眼睛里 它会变成一个网格结构 而因此它就变透明了,而不是(犹如指甲般)半透明。 组织的如此完美的一个结构, 很难不把这说成是神威所致 因为我们会一遍又一遍的不断看到这个(变化), 在身体各个不同的位置。
One of the opportunities I had was one person was working on a really interesting micromagnetic resonance imaging machine with the NIH. And what we were going to do was scan a new project on the development of the fetus from conception to birth using these new technologies. So I wrote the algorithms and code, and he built the hardware -- Paul Lauterbur -- then went onto win the Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI. I got the data. And I'm going to show you a sample of the piece, "From Conception to Birth."
我曾经有个机会 和另一位为美国国家卫生研究院 研究微型磁共振成像机的人共事 我们要做的是 利用这些新科技 为一个关于胎儿发育的 新项目做扫描 我还是写我的算法和程序 而他,保罗·劳特伯尔,则负责硬件 他的磁共振成像后来赢得了诺贝尔奖 我有那些数据 我这就给大家看这研究的一个样片 “从受孕至出生”
(Music)
♫♪音乐♫
[From Conception to Birth]
“从受孕至出生”
[Oocyte]
卵母细胞
[Sperm]
精子
[Egg Inseminated]
卵子被受精
[24 Hours: Baby's first division]
第24个小时:婴儿“第一个分裂”
[The fertilized ovum divides a few hours after fusion...]
受精卵融合几个小时后开始分裂
[And divides anew every 12 to 15 hours.]
差不多12至15小时分裂一次
[Early Embryo]
胚胎早期
[Yolk sack still feeding baby.]
卵黄依然给予胚胎营养
[25 Days: Heart chamber developing.]
第25天:心室正在发育
[32 Days: Arms & hands are developing]
第32天:胳膊和手开始成型
[36 Days: Beginning of the primitive vertebrae]
第36天:原始脊椎出现
[These weeks are the period of the most rapid development of the fetus.]
这几个星期是胚胎发育最快的阶段
[If the fetus continues to grow at this speed for the entire 9 months, it would be 1.5 tons at birth.]
假设胎儿九个月都在以这个速度生长…… 它将会以1.5吨的重量出生
[45 Days]
第45天
[Embryo's heart is beating twice as fast as the mother's.]
胎儿的心速是母亲的一倍
[51 Days]
第51天
[Developing retina, nose and fingers]
第52天:发育中的视网膜,鼻子和手指
[The fetus' continual movement in the womb is necessary for muscular and skeletal growth.]
胎儿在子宫中不断地活动 有必要帮助肌肉及骨骼的生长
[12 Weeks: Indifferent penis]
第12周:性别未分化的阴茎
[Girl or boy yet to be determined]
男孩女孩无法分辨
[8 Months]
八个月
[Delivery: The expulsion stage]
分娩:生产阶段
[The moment of birth]
生命的奇迹
(Applause)
掌声
Alexander Tsiaras: Thank you. But as you can see, when you actually start working on this data, it's pretty spectacular. And as we kept on scanning more and more, working on this project, looking at these two simple cells that have this unbelievable machinery that will become the magic of you. And as we kept on working on this data, looking at small clusters of the body, these little pieces of tissue that were the trophoblasts coming off of the blastocyst, all of a sudden burrowing itself into the side of the uterus, saying, "I'm here to stay." Having conversation and communications with the estrogens, the progesterones, saying, "I'm here to stay, plant me," building this incredible trilinear fetus that becomes, within 44 days, something that you can recognize, and then at nine weeks is really kind of a little human being. The marvel of this information: How do we actually have this biological mechanism inside our body to actually see this information?
感谢大家 由此可见 当你开始处理这些数据的时候 其实是很壮观的 当我们继续扫描 做这个项目的时候 看到这两个很简单的细胞 拥有这种难以置信的机械构造 而这最终会变成一个人 当我们继续加工这数据 看着身体的这些小小的部分 这一小团组织 从怀胎分化出来的滋养细胞群 转眼嵌入了子宫壁 与子宫开始沟通 与雌激素和孕酮沟通 说:我要留下 说:我要留在这,养育我 逐渐成为这个三胚层胚胎 在44天左右 胚胎便可以辨认 并在九周内 基本就变成一个小人 这信息令人超凡之处在于 人体内原有的 生物机制是如何 读出这些信息的?
I'm going to show you something pretty unique. Here's a human heart at 25 days. It's just basically two strands. And like this magnificent origami, cells are developing at one million cells per second at four weeks, as it's just folding on itself. Within five weeks, you start to see the early atrium and the early ventricles. Six weeks, these folds are now beginning with the papilla on the inside of the heart actually being able to pull down each one of those valves in your heart until you get a mature heart -- and then basically the development of the entire human body. The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go -- the complexity of these, the mathematical models of how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension.
给你们看个很别致的东西 这是25周大胚胎的心脏 只有两根血管 而就像一个壮观的折纸手工 在胚胎四周大时,细胞 会以每秒上千万的速度生长 就像折纸一样折叠自己 五周大的胚胎,可以辨认出心房、心室 六周大,这些折叠便开始 和心脏内的乳头肌一起 能够拽下 心脏内每个瓣膜 直至心脏发育完毕 ——直至全身发育完止 即便身为数学家的我 也要惊叹 这里生物机制的魔法 在每个基因结构内 能准确指示每个细胞去哪里的机制 能解释这一过程的数学模型
Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel of how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us? It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity. Then you start to take a look at adult life. Take a look at this little tuft of capillaries. It's just a tiny sub-substructure, microscopic. But basically by the time you're nine months and you're given birth, you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels inside your body. And only one mile is visible. 59,999 miles that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away. The complexity of building that within a single system is, again, beyond any comprehension or any existing mathematics today.
的复杂性 远远超过人类的理解 我迷惑这些指令 在我们形成的时候 如何不出错? 真神秘,简直不可思议 然后看看成人的生命 看看这一绺毛细血管 只是一个很小的,微观的结构 但你九个月出生的时候 你体内已拥有 近六万英里(近九万六千公里)的血管 只有一英里是可见的 其他的59,999英里 输送营养带走废物的血管 在一个独立系统内达到这种复杂程度 重申一遍,是超乎理解的 超过现有任何的科学的可能性
And then instructions set, from the brain to every other part of the body -- look at the complexity of the folding. Where does this intelligence of knowing that a fold can actually hold more information, so as you actually watch the baby's brain grow. And this is one of the things we're doing. We're launching two new studies of scanning babies' brains from the moment they're born. Every six months until they're six years old, we're going to be doing about 250 children, watching exactly how the gyri and the sulci of the brains fold to see how this magnificent development actually turns into memories and the marvel that is us.
从大脑到人体每个部位的 复杂指令 看看这折叠有多复杂 而身体从哪里得到 知道哪里折叠可以获得更多 储存容量的智慧 这也正是我们现在正在做的研究之一 要从婴儿出生开始 每六个月一次,知道六岁为止 扫描婴儿的大脑 大约要扫描250名小孩 观察他们脑回和脑沟具体如何发展 观察这个惊人的过程 是如何变成记忆 如何变成我们
And it's not just our own existence, but how does the woman's body understand to have genetic structure that not only builds her own, but then has the understanding that allows her to become a walking immunological, cardiovascular system that basically is a mobile system that can actually nurture, treat this child with a kind of marvel that is beyond, again, our comprehension -- the magic that is existence, that is us?
而着奇迹不仅限于我们个人的存在 女性的身体是如何知道 基因信息不仅需要制造自己 还要有足够理解 如何让自己变成 一个行走的免疫、心血管系统 一个可移动哺育系统 一个可以用超过我们理解能力的奇迹—— 来招待这个孩子的系统 一个存在奇迹。我们存在的奇迹。
Thank you.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
掌声