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Four-Legged Biosensors Sniff Out Bird Flu
四条腿的生物传感器

You’ve probably seen dogs working security at airports, sniffing for drugs, bombs and contraband food. Now our best-friend biosensors might have a new task: ferretting out the scent of bird flu.
你可能见过机场的安防狗，它们用鼻子检测毒品、炸弹和违禁的食品。最近，我们这些最好的生物传感器朋友们貌似接到一个新的任务：搜索禽流感的味道。

And they may not be alone on the job. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monell Chemical Senses Center trained mice to identify duck droppings from animals infected with bird flu. The work was presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. [Bruce Kimball et al.]
它们不会势单力薄的。美国农业部门和莫奈儿化学感官中心的研究人员训练老鼠们来辨认感染了禽流感的鸭子排泄物。这项工作在波士顿召开的美国化学协会的全国会议上提出。

The scientists trained six mice to run a maze in search of infected feces. Every time they found the right feces, they got a drink of water. The mice learned to choose infected over noninfected duck feces about 90 percent of the time.
科学家训练六只小老鼠走迷宫，以期找出感染的排泄物。每一次它们找出正确的排泄物，就能得到一口水做奖赏。小老鼠们学会了在90%没有感染的鸭子排泄物中筛选出感染过的。

The researchers believe the implications could be twofold. First, bird flu apparently leaves an odor imprint on bird feces, and so dogs—and even mice—could be trained to recognize it. Second, scientists might be able to isolate the cocktail of compounds that gives off the odor to develop lab instruments or automated field detectors. Until then, we may find four-legged sensors, large and small, sniffing away to protect us from a bird-borne epidemic.
研究人员认为此项结果有两重含义。首先，显然，禽流感在禽类粪便上留下了气味，于是狗儿们，甚至小老鼠们训练后都可以辨别出来。其次，科学家们可以从化合物中将散发气味的混合物隔离出来用来改良实验室仪器或自动探测器。到那时，我们就可以发现这些大大小小的四条腿传感器们吸出鸟类的疫病保护我们。

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