新奇事件簿 眼睫毛防止眼睛干枯（在线收听）

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.

为什么眼睫毛就是那么长，对这个老生常谈的问题，科学家想出了答案。佐治亚理工学院的研究人员对22种哺乳动物的睫毛进行了多项研究。人们的目标是制作出一个特殊的通风道，和人工眼球来测算出风是如何影响睫毛的。研究主任大卫·胡的结论是眼睫毛的作用是用来保护眼睛干涩的，而理想的眼睫毛长度是眼宽的三分之一。胡教授发现在众多哺乳动物中，眼睫毛和严宽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."

就在胡博士的女儿出生后，他开始了他的调查。他想到为什么女儿在不停地眨眼。他告诉 国际财经时报说：“在哺乳动物中，眼睫毛的作用一直是个迷。人们对此有许多假设，例如有人说有除尘的作用、还有人认为其目的是为了引起瞬目反射。我们所做的研究是首个对于眼睫毛的空气动力学研究。我们应用了三个独立的方法，结论是眼睫毛减少了眼睛70%的水分蒸发，并减少了眼睛中的细小空气颗粒。”胡博士的一名同事称胡博士在这方面很有天赋，人们能够看到的他都能看到，但是他确实第一个进行深入研究的人。”