Researchers at Michigan State University recently found that bees’ sense of “smell” is sensitive enough to identify chemical smells of cancer. 

密歇根州立大学的研究人员最近发现，蜜蜂的“嗅觉”足够灵敏，可以识别癌症的化学气味。 

Bees sense chemicals in their environment using antennae, structures on their heads, which serve as “noses” to sense smells. 

蜜蜂使用触角来感知环境中的化学物质，触角是它们头部的结构，充当感知气味的“鼻子”。 

The researchers wrote in a study published last month that honeybees can sniff out lung cancer on a patient’s breath. 

研究人员在上个月发表的一项研究中写道，蜜蜂可以通过病人的呼吸嗅出肺癌。

Debajit Saha is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan State University. He was part of a team that published the research. 

Debajit Saha 是密歇根州立大学生物医学工程助理教授。他是发表该研究的团队的一员。 

“Our world is visual. [The] insects’ world is all based on smell, so their sense of smell is very, very good,” Saha said. 

“我们的世界是视觉的。昆虫的世界都是基于嗅觉的，所以它们的嗅觉非常非常好，”萨哈说。 

“There is quite a bit of research that shows that when some cancer grows inside our body, our breath actually changes. Our research does show that honeybees can detect lung cancer and possibly other diseases based on the smell of those cells.” 

“大量研究表明，当某些癌症在我们体内生长时，我们的呼吸实际上会发生变化。我们的研究确实表明，蜜蜂可以根据这些细胞的气味来检测肺癌和可能的其他疾病。

”Saha and his team placed bees in small harnesses and attached small wires to their brains. The insects were then placed near chemicals that are like the breath of a person with lung cancer. 

萨哈和他的团队将蜜蜂放入小挽具中，并将小电线连接到它们的大脑上。然后将这些昆虫放置在类似于肺癌患者呼吸的化学物质附近。 

The scientists said that the bees could tell the difference between the cancer breath and the laboratory copy of the healthy human breath 93 percent of the time. The scientists added that the bees could also tell the difference between different kinds of lung cancer. 

科学家们表示，蜜蜂在 93% 的情况下可以区分癌症呼吸和健康人类呼吸的实验室副本。科学家们补充说，蜜蜂还可以区分不同类型的肺癌。 

The discovery could help doctors detect many cancers, including lung, breast, head and neck, and colorectal cancers, earlier than other methods. Saha says detecting cancers this way would be an improvement. “The reason is, many times we detect the cancer late,” when a growth has become too big to control easily. But, he added, when cancer starts growing the breath starts changing much earlier. 

这一发现可以帮助医生比其他方法更早地发现许多癌症，包括肺癌、乳腺癌、头颈癌和结直肠癌。萨哈说，以这种方式检测癌症将是一种进步。“原因是，很多时候我们发现癌症已经很晚了”，此时肿瘤已经变得太大而难以控制。但是，他补充说，当癌症开始生长时，呼吸就会更早地开始发生变化。 

He hopes to develop a system that a patient will be able to breathe into and which can be carried around easily. This would deliver test results immediately. 

他希望开发一种患者能够呼吸并且可以轻松携带的系统。这将立即提供测试结果。

“Hopefully, within the next five years, we'll have something to show that humans can be diagnosed using these insect brain disc sensors,” Saha said. 

“希望在未来五年内，我们能够证明人类可以使用这些昆虫脑盘传感器进行诊断，”萨哈说。

Using animals to detect cancer is not a new idea. At the Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers are training dogs to smell some kinds of cancer. 

利用动物来检测癌症并不是一个新想法。在宾夕法尼亚大学宾夕法尼亚兽医工作犬中心，研究人员正在训练狗闻出某些癌症的气味。 

Cindy Otto is executive director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center in Philadelphia. She said many other animals also have very good senses of smell. “But part of what makes dogs so good is that they cooperate with humans, and so, they communicate that information,” she added. 

辛迪·奥托是费城宾夕法尼亚州兽医工作犬中心的执行董事。她说许多其他动物也有很好的嗅觉。“但狗如此优秀的部分原因是它们与人类合作，因此它们传达了这些信息，”她补充道。 

The dogs are in a program where they live with families and are brought to “work” each day. Not all dogs can do this work. Otto said,

这些狗参加了一个项目，它们与家人住在一起，每天都被带到“工作”。并不是所有的狗都能胜任这项工作。奥托说， 

“They need to love it to be engaged. And so, it's a really fun game for them.”

“他们需要热爱它才能订婚。所以，这对他们来说是一个非常有趣的游戏。

”Some researchers say that dogs detect cancer better than machines. They note that a dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times sharper than that of humans.

一些研究人员表示，狗比机器更好地检测癌症。他们指出，狗的嗅觉比人类灵敏 10,000 到 100,000 倍。 

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