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Science & technology
科技版塊
human behaviour
人類行為
Smell you later, alligator
待會再聞聞你，短吻鱷
Friends is seems often have similiar body odours
朋友之間似乎經常有相似的體味
Dogs greet other dogs nose-first, as it were -- sniffing each other from fore to (especially) aft.
狗與其他狗打招呼時，可以說是用鼻子打招呼，尤其是從頭到尾互相嗅聞。
People are not quite so open about the process of sniffing each other out.
人們對相互嗅探的過程并不是很開放。
But the size of the perfume industry suggests scent is important in human relations, too.
但香水行業的規模表明，氣味在人際關系中也很重要。
There is also evidence that human beings can infer kinship, deduce emotional states and even detect disease via the sense of smell.
也有證據表明，人類可以通過嗅覺推斷親屬關系、推斷情緒狀態，甚至可以檢測疾病。
Now, Inbal Ravreby, Kobi Snitz and Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, have gone a step further.
現在，以色列魏茲曼科學研究所的Inbal RAVREBY、Kobi Snitz和Noam Sobel在這方面的研究更深入。
They think they have shown, admittedly in a fairly small sample of individuals, that friends actually smell alike.
他們認為，他們已經證明了，在相當小的個體樣本中，朋友的氣味實際上是相似的。
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 converging.
他們還表明，這種情況可能從一開始就存在，人們在選擇朋友時至少有一部分是基于體味，而不是成為朋友之后合在一起的體味。
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.
根據他們在《科學進展》上的報告，Ravreby博士、Snitz博士和Sobel博士測試了20對確定的、不浪漫的同性朋友的氣味。
To do this they employed an electronic nose (e-nose) and two groups of specially recruited human “smellers”.
為了做到這一點，他們使用了電子鼻和兩組專門招募的人類“嗅覺”。
The e-nose used a set of metal-oxide gas sensors to assess t-shirts worn by participants.
電子鼻使用了一套金屬氧化物氣體傳感器來評估參與者穿的t恤。
One group of human smellers were given pairs of these shirts and asked to rate how similar they smelt.
研究人員給了一組人類“嗅覺”們幾件這樣的襯衫，并讓他們評價它們聞起來的相似程度。
Those in the other group were asked to rate the odours of individual t-shirts on five subjective dimensions: pleasantness, intensity, sexual attractiveness, competence and warmth.
另一組受試者被要求從五個主觀維度對每件t恤的氣味進行評分：愉悅、強烈、性吸引力、能力和溫暖。
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，電子鼻的結果和第二組“人類嗅覺”的意見進行了一些多維數學上的擺弄(想想把結果畫在圖表上，除了圖表紙有五個維度)，它們以簡單的、可比較的數字出現。
All three approaches yielded the same result.
這三種方法都產生了相同的結果。
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恤聞起來更相似。
Friends, in other words, do indeed smell alike.
換句話說，朋友聞起來確實是一樣的。
But why?
但是為什么呢？
