Sniff Out Stress
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狗狗的超能力：闻出你的压力
Dogs see the world through their noses. Their exceptional ability to recognize specific scents — vastly better than humans — helps them find bombs, guns, drugs and human remains, and point to some diseases. Now a study has found that dogs can do something just as remarkable: sniff out stress in people.
狗用鼻子来“看”世界。它们识别特殊气味的能力远远优于人类，这种能力帮助它们找到炸弹、枪支、毒品和人类的遗骸，并发现某些疾病。日前一项研究表明狗还有一项超能力：可以嗅到人的压力。
一只名叫“Soot”的雌性救援犬在贝尔法斯特女王大学搜寻了一系列气味，并识别出了压力样本。(Video: Matt Donnelly / Queen's University Belfast)
The dogs were able to smell changes in human breath and sweat, and — with high accuracy — identify chemical odors people emit when feeling stressed. The findings provide “deeper knowledge of the human-dog relationship and adds to our understanding of how dogs perceive and interact with human psychological states,” said Clara Wilson. Wilson, a doctoral student in the Queen’s University Belfast school of psychology, is one of the study authors.
狗能嗅到人的呼吸和汗液的变化，并且能够精准地识别出人类感到紧张时散发的化学气味。这项研究的一位负责人，贝尔法斯特女王大学心理学院的博士生克拉拉·威尔逊(Clara Wilson）表示：“这些发现加深了我们对人犬关系的认识，并帮助我们进一步了解犬类是如何感知人类的心理状况并与之互动的。”
能嗅到“压力”但无法识别情绪
研究者给参与实验的人出了一道很难的数学题，并在其解题前后分别收集了他们的汗液和呼气样本，且只使用了那些在解题时血压和心率升高的人的样本。
用于实验的四只狗是从一大群狗中挑选出来的。为了教这些狗分辨有效气味，科学家们首先让它们同时嗅探有压力的人的汗液与呼气样本和两个装有干净纱布的对照瓶，然后用点击器*和食物训练这些狗识别出正确的气味。随即，实验者给予每只狗来自同一个实验对象的呼气和汗液样本，这些样本来自实验对象承受心理压力的前后。
点击器（Clickers）: 点击器训练，或标记或奖励，是积极强化狗训练的一种形式，传达给狗做你想要做的事情的确切时刻。点击的时间至关重要，每次点击都必须获得奖励。
Soot是一种雌性混合梗犬型品种救援犬，是贝尔法斯特女王大学一项研究中包含的四只狗之一，该研究测试了狗嗅到压力的能力。(Video: Matt Donnelly / Queen's University Belfast)
The dogs correctly alerted the researchers to each person’s stress sample in nearly 94 percent of the 720 trials, Wilson said.
“狗狗们准确地选出了每个人的压力样本，在720个实验中，准确率接近94%。”威尔逊表示。
The study did not determine whether the dogs could identify human emotions, that is, recognize whether participants were feeling happy, sad, angry or fearful, for example — only that they were experiencing stress as measured by the physiological signs of increasing heart rate and blood pressure.
这项实验不能确定狗狗是否能识别人类的情感，换句话说，并不能识别出实验对象是开心，难过，生气抑或是害怕的，只能确定实验对象正在承受压力，可通过心率和血压升高这样的生理信号来衡量。
“The dogs can differentiate something about human odors in stressed vs. non-stressed states, but not necessarily that they know anything about how a person is feeling, or what it means when the humans are stressed,” said Evan MacLean. MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona, was not part of the study.
“狗可以分辨人类在紧张和放松状态下气味的不同，但实验结果不确定它们能否感受到人类的心情，抑或理解人类的'紧张'。”亚利桑那大学犬类认知中心的主任麦克莱恩(Evan MacLean)表示，但其并未参与研究。
狗还能嗅到“新冠病毒”？
在宾夕法尼亚州格林卡斯尔的一家寄宿和训练机构“Good Dog”，一只狗正在使用气味轮。(Washington Post photo by Bonnie Jo Mount)
Blaze is one of nine dogs enrolled in a University of Pennsylvania study into whether dogs can detect a distinct smell in people infected with the novel coronavirus. His triumph on that early July day — selecting a can containing urine from a hospitalized coronavirus-positivepatient over an array of potentially confusing alternatives — is a key step in a training process that may one day allow dogs to pick out infected individuals, including those who are asymptomatic, in nursing homes, businesses and airports, potentially screening as many as 250 people an hour.
Blaze是参与宾夕法尼亚大学一项研究实验的九只狗之一，该实验致力于研究狗是否能在感染新型冠状病毒的人身上识别出不同的特征性气味。Blaze在七月初的某天取得了“重大成果”：它在一大堆充满迷惑性的对照样本中，成功挑选出了一个装有正在住院的阳性患者尿液的罐子，这是实验训练过程中的关键一步。在未来的某一天，狗狗们或许可以在疗养院、企业机构、机场等场所识别新冠患者和无症状感染者，预计每小时可筛查多达250人。
一群医生和研究员正在训练狗狗嗅出COVID-19
Blaze’s success also marks an advance in the evolving field of olfactory disease detection — the concept that many human illnesses, including emerging diseases, are characterized by distinct “odorprints” that can be identified by both dogs and artificial noses, which could be quicker, less invasive and more accurate than current forms of clinical testing.
Blaze的成功也标志着嗅觉疾病检测领域的发展进步——该领域的理念是：人类面临的许多疾病，包括新兴疾病，都具有其独特的“气味印记”，可以被狗狗及人造鼻识别。这种嗅觉检测比常规的临床试验形式更快速，更精确，且对病人侵入性更小。
嗅探犬Kossi在短短七分钟内学会了检测COVID-19（Image: Lehtikuva/Reuters）
“As eager as we are to put this out there, we want to make sure it is responsible, ethical, scientific and safe,” said Otto,director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.even as she admitted that seeing Blaze perform with such accuracy after just 10 weeks of training gave her chills. Moving from the controlled setting of the training facility to finding the scent on thousands of travelers in busy airports is a huge step.
宾夕法尼亚大学兽医学院、宾州兽医工作犬中心的主管奥拓（Otto）称：“虽然我们迫切地想将这个结果公之于众，但是我们想确保试验成果是可靠的，并符合道德准则、科学安全。”尽管她承认，她震惊于Blaze在短短十周的训练后就表现出如此的准确性。但对狗狗们而言，从在训练场识别人为控制的实验样本到在繁忙的机场检测成千上万的游客，这之间仍需坚持不断的努力。
赫尔辛基机场使用嗅探犬检测冠状病毒，但资金即将用完（Image: Lehtikuva/Reuters）
Perdita Barran, a professor of mass spectrometry at the University of Manchester who has worked with medical detection dogs in previous studies, has her doubts about using dogs to meet the world’s pressing testing needs.
曼彻斯特大学的质谱学教授佩尔迪塔·巴兰（Perdita Barran）曾在之前的学术研究中与医学检测犬项目有过合作，她对使用狗狗来满足社会对检测的迫切需求表示质疑。
While dogs’ sensitive snouts are very good at “proof of concept” — establishing whether infection with the virus actually produces a distinct odor — training each one is time-consuming and very expensive, Barran said, while the demand is widespread and urgent.
Barran表示，虽然狗狗灵敏的鼻子非常擅长“概念验证”*，即确定人们感染病毒是否真的会产生一种独特的气味，但训练其灵敏度既耗时又昂贵，而检测需求却是广泛而迫切的。
概念验证（Proof Of Concept / POC）：是一种验证方法，用于分析一个想法是否可以变成现实。它在产品生命周期的初始阶段使用，并确定其可行性，向潜在投资者，经理和其他利益相关者证明，提出的想法，产品或系统可以应用于现实生活，以获得他们的批准并将其带入商业化阶段。
Word list
asymptomatic. [adj].having no symptoms 无症状的
· The two wings of the building are exactly symmetrical.
olfactory.[adj]. connected with the sense of smell 嗅觉的
· This olfactory sense develops in the womb.
coronavirus-positive. 新冠阳性
sniffer dogs.嗅探犬
原文链接:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/11/how-dogs-smell-human-stress/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/08/18/dogs-sniff-coronavirus-detection/
编译 | 索朗央宗 宋嘉硕 鲍宇鑫 李艳阳
排版 | 李艳阳
