2022年经济学人 朋友之间“臭味相投”科学依据来了(1)

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Science & technology

科技版块

human behaviour

人类行为

Smell you later, alligator¹

待会再闻闻你，短吻鳄

Friends is seems often have similiar body odours

朋友之间似乎经常有相似的体味

Dogs greet other dogs nose-first, as it were -- sniffing² each other from fore³ to (especially) aft.

狗与其他狗打招呼时，可以说是用鼻子打招呼，尤其是从头到尾互相嗅闻。

People are not quite so open about the process of sniffing each other out.

人们对相互嗅探的过程并不是很开放。

But the size of the perfume industry suggests scent⁵ is important in human relations, too.

但香水行业的规模表明，气味在人际关系中也很重要。

There is also evidence that human beings can infer kinship, deduce emotional states and even detect disease via the sense of smell.

也有证据表明，人类可以通过嗅觉推断亲属关系、推断情绪状态，甚至可以检测疾病。

Now, Inbal Ravreby, Kobi Snitz and Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, have gone a step further.

现在，以色列魏兹曼科学研究所的Inbal RAVREBY、Kobi Snitz和Noam Sobel在这方面的研究更深入。

They think they have shown, admittedly in a fairly small sample of individuals, that friends actually smell alike.

他们认为，他们已经证明了，在相当小的个体样本中，朋友的气味实际上是相似的。

They have also shown that this is probably the case from the get-go, with people picking friends at least partly on the basis of body odour, rather than the body odours of people who become friends subsequently converging⁶.

他们还表明，这种情况可能从一开始就存在，人们在选择朋友时至少有一部分是基于体味，而不是成为朋友之后合在一起的体味。

As they report in Science Advances, Dr Ravreby, Dr Snitz and Dr Sobel started their research by testing the odours of 20 pairs of established, non-romantic, same-sex friends.

根据他们在《科学进展》上的报告，Ravreby博士、Snitz博士和Sobel博士测试了20对确定的、不浪漫的同性朋友的气味。

To do this they employed an electronic nose (e-nose) and two groups of specially⁴ recruited human “smellers”.

为了做到这一点，他们使用了电子鼻和两组专门招募的人类“嗅觉”。

The e-nose used a set of metal-oxide gas sensors⁷ to assess t-shirts worn by participants.

电子鼻使用了一套金属氧化物气体传感器来评估参与者穿的t恤。

One group of human smellers were given pairs of these shirts and asked to rate how similar they smelt⁸.

研究人员给了一组人类“嗅觉”们几件这样的衬衫，并让他们评价它们闻起来的相似程度。

Those in the other group were asked to rate the odours of individual t-shirts on five subjective⁹ dimensions: pleasantness, intensity¹⁰, sexual attractiveness, competence¹¹ and warmth.

另一组受试者被要求从五个主观维度对每件t恤的气味进行评分：愉悦、强烈、性吸引力、能力和温暖。

The e-nose results and the opinions of the second group of smellers were then subjected to a bit of multidimensional mathematical jiggery-pokery (think plotting the results on a graph, except that the graph paper has five dimensions), and they, too, emerged as simple, comparable numbers.

然后，电子鼻的结果和第二组“人类嗅觉”的意见进行了一些多维数学上的摆弄(想想把结果画在图表上，除了图表纸有五个维度)，它们以简单的、可比较的数字出现。

All three approaches yielded the same result.

这三种方法都产生了相同的结果。

The t-shirts of friends smelt more similar to each other than did the t-shirts of strangers.

相比陌生人的t恤，朋友的t恤闻起来更相似。

Friends, in other words, do indeed smell alike.

换句话说，朋友闻起来确实是一样的。

But why?

但是为什么呢？

1 alligator   

n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼)

参考例句：

• She wandered off to play with her toy alligator.她开始玩鳄鱼玩具。
• Alligator skin is five times more costlier than leather.鳄鱼皮比通常的皮革要贵5倍。

2 sniffing   

n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说

参考例句：

• We all had colds and couldn't stop sniffing and sneezing. 我们都感冒了，一个劲地抽鼻子，打喷嚏。
• They all had colds and were sniffing and sneezing. 他们都伤风了，呼呼喘气而且打喷嚏。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

3 fore   

adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部

参考例句：

• Your seat is in the fore part of the aircraft.你的座位在飞机的前部。
• I have the gift of fore knowledge.我能够未卜先知。

4 specially   

adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地

参考例句：

• They are specially packaged so that they stack easily.它们经过特别包装以便于堆放。
• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings.这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。

5 scent   

n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉

参考例句：

• The air was filled with the scent of lilac.空气中弥漫着丁香花的芬芳。
• The flowers give off a heady scent at night.这些花晚上散发出醉人的芳香。

6 converging   

adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集

参考例句：

• Plants had gradually evolved along diverging and converging pathways. 植物是沿着趋异和趋同两种途径逐渐演化的。 来自辞典例句
• This very slowly converging series was known to Leibniz in 1674. 这个收敛很慢的级数是莱布尼茨在1674年得到的。 来自辞典例句

7 sensors   

n.传感器，灵敏元件( sensor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There were more than 2000 sensors here. 这里装有两千多个灵敏元件。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Significant changes have been noted where sensors were exposed to trichloride. 当传感器暴露在三氯化物中时，有很大变化。 来自辞典例句

8 smelt   

v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼

参考例句：

• Tin is a comparatively easy metal to smelt.锡是比较容易熔化的金属。
• Darby was looking for a way to improve iron when he hit upon the idea of smelting it with coke instead of charcoal.达比一直在寻找改善铁质的方法，他猛然想到可以不用木炭熔炼，而改用焦炭。

9 subjective   

a.主观(上)的，个人的

参考例句：

• The way they interpreted their past was highly subjective. 他们解释其过去的方式太主观。
• A literary critic should not be too subjective in his approach. 文学评论家的看法不应太主观。

10 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

11 competence   

n.能力，胜任，称职

参考例句：

• This mess is a poor reflection on his competence.这种混乱情况说明他难当此任。
• These are matters within the competence of the court.这些是法院权限以内的事。