新奇事件簿 眼睫毛防止眼睛干枯

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Scientists have come up with answers to the age-old question of why eyelashes are the length they are. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology conducted a variety of tests on the lashes of 22 differentmammals. One was to create a special wind tunnel and an artificial eye to provide mathematical models of how the wind blew over lashes. The conclusion of head researcher David Hu is that the function of eyelashesis to help protect the eyes from drying out and that the optimal eyelash length for this to happen is one-third as long as the eye is wide. Professor Hu found that across a wide variety of mammals, the ratio of eyelash length and eye width was consistently one-third.

為什么眼睫毛就是那么長，對這個老生常談的問題，科學家想出了答案。佐治亞理工學院的研究人員對22種哺乳動物的睫毛進行了多項研究。人們的目標是制作出一個特殊的通風道，和人工眼球來測算出風是如何影響睫毛的。研究主任大衛(wèi)·胡的結論是眼睫毛的作用是用來保護眼睛干澀的，而理想的眼睫毛長度是眼寬的三分之一。胡教授發(fā)現(xiàn)在眾多哺乳動物中，眼睫毛和嚴寬的比例都是三分之一。

Dr Hu started his investigation after the birth of his newborn daughter. He wondered why his baby kept on batting her eyelids. He told the International Business Times that: "Eyelashes that rim the eyes in mammals have been a mystery for a long time as to what their function was. There were a lot of hypotheses, from dust catchers to triggering the blink reflex….What we did was the first aerodynamic study of eyelashes. We showed using three independent means that eyelashes reduce evaporation of the eye by 70 per cent, and they reduce [the deposits] of small airborne particles." A colleague said Hu had a talent for, "looking at what everybody has looked at, and seeing what nobody has seen."

就在胡博士的女兒出生后，他開始了他的調查。他想到為什么女兒在不停地眨眼。他告訴 國際財經(jīng)時報說：“在哺乳動物中，眼睫毛的作用一直是個迷。人們對此有許多假設，例如有人說有除塵的作用、還有人認為其目的是為了引起瞬目反射。我們所做的研究是首個對于眼睫毛的空氣動力學研究。我們應用了三個獨立的方法，結論是眼睫毛減少了眼睛70%的水分蒸發(fā)，并減少了眼睛中的細小空氣顆粒。”胡博士的一名同事稱胡博士在這方面很有天賦，人們能夠看到的他都能看到，但是他確實第一個進行深入研究的人。”