科學及技術

　　Human communication

　　人類交流

　　Gesture politics

　　形體政治學

　　People talk a lot, but their hand signals may conveymore useful information

　　雖然人類主要通過語言交流，但是一些手勢往往能傳達更多有用的信息。

　　Silence is golden

　　沉默是金

　　IT IS received wisdom that humanity owes a lot of its evolutionary success to its remarkableability to communicate.

　　人類在進化上的成功大部分歸功于其非凡的交流能力已經成為一個被接受的常識。

　　So much so, in fact, that few have bothered to test this hypothesis in any systematic way.

　　盡管如此，事實上還沒有人系統地驗證過這一假設。

　　Now, a group of researchers led by Andrew King, of the Royal Veterinary College in Britain, has tried to plug this gaping hole.

　　如今，一個由“英國皇家獸醫學院”的安德魯.科恩率領的研究小組正嘗試填補這塊空缺。

　　Their first results have just been published in Biology Letters.

　　他們的第一個研究成果被發表在了《生物學快報》上。

　　Hunter-gatherers’ practice of scouring their surroundings for edible plants is responsible for half of the name anthropologists have bestowed on them.

　　采獵者搜集居住區周圍可食用植物的行為應了人類學家賦予他們的名字中的一半的內容。

　　And for good reason.

　　而出于此理由，

　　With hunting likely to have been an intermittent diversion, effective foraging would have beencrucial to tiding early humans over to the next woolly mammoth.

　　狩獵可能變成了一種間歇性的活動，而有效的搜集活動對于幫助早期人類渡過冰河時期起到了關鍵作用。

　　So Dr King and his colleagues conducted a study to see how, if at all, communication enhances foraging prowess.

　　所以，科恩博士及其同事主持了這項研究活動以確認交流是如何促進搜集技巧的。

　　They recruited 121 visitors to, rather appropriately, the London Zoo, and split them into 43 groups.

　　他們邀請了大約121名游客訪問倫敦動物園，并將他們分成了43個小組。

　　Each group contained between two and seven people.

　　每個小組的成員在2到7人之間，

　　Some were single-sex and some mixed.

　　且有的為單一性別，有的為男女混合搭配。

　　Some were composed of family and friends whereas others brought together complete strangers.

　　部分小組由親戚朋友組成，其他則完全是陌生人。

　　Half the groups were allowed to communicate freely.

　　在這些小組中，一半可以進行自由交流，

　　The rest were told to exchange no verbal signals or gestures of any kind.

　　另一半擇不允許通過聲音信號以及任何肢體動作進行交流。

　　Each group was then asked to a room containing six foraging patches—boxes filled with 300 cards, some green and some white—arranged at a distance from a central home base.

　　每個小組會被邀請到一個設置了6個搜集區---也就是盛有300張綠色和白色卡片的盒子的房間，這些盒子被放置在離中心基地區域一定距離的地方。

　　The green cards were defined as good and the patches varied from 5% to 95% green.

　　綠色的卡片為最好，每個搜集區所含綠色卡片的比例由5%到95%不等。

　　The foragers could not see inside the boxes and were allowed to pick only one card at a time, through a hand hole, using their dominant hand.

　　搜集者看不到盒子的內部情況并且只能慣用手從小孔處一次取出一枚卡片。

　　There were no restrictions on which patches to visit, but each time a card was plucked it had to be returned to the home base, irrespective of colour.

　　對于訪問哪個搜集區并沒有設置限制，但是每次卡片在取出之后無論是什么顏色，都必須送回基地區域。

　　The goal was to collect as many good cards as possible in an unspecified short period of time (all trials actually lasted ten minutes).

　　小組的目標就是在給定的時間段內(事實上每次嘗試持續10分鐘)搜集盡可能多的綠色卡片。

　　As an incentive, members of the best-performing group would receive an animal-adoption prize worth ￡30 ($47).

　　作為鼓勵，表現最好的小組將獲得價值30英鎊(47美元)的動物領養獎勵。

　　Before the modern-day foragers were let loose, radio-frequency tags, like those used in swipe cards, were wrapped around everyone’s dominant wrist.

　　原始社會的搜集者比較分散，所以每個成員慣用手的手腕上都配帶了一個與磁卡無線電標簽相似的標簽。

　　All the good forage cards were similarly tagged.

　　所有綠色卡片上同樣安置了相同的標簽。

　　These, together with antennae on top of the boxes and in the home base, allowed Dr King totrack the group members’ precise movements.

　　這些標簽和卡片盒上以及基地區域內安置的天線使得科恩博士可以精準地追蹤每個小組的行動。

　　That, in turn, made it possible to determine how long it took each group to reach a consensus,defined as concentrating more than 90% of activity around a single patch.

　　從而，有可能確定每個小組需要花多長時間來達成共識，即該小組95%的活動都集中在一個搜集區內。

　　Unsurprisingly, the groups that were allowed to communicate proved the more effectiveforagers.

　　事實證明，那些可以進行交流的小組的搜集者效率相對較高。

　　They were much likelier than their non-communicating peers to converge on the greenest patches.

　　這也并讓人感到不驚訝。與其他不可以進行交流的競爭者相比，他們更有可能匯聚在綠色卡片最多的搜集區。

　　What did come as something of a surprise, however, was the nature of the communication that mattered.

　　然而讓人感到驚訝的卻是他們交流的方式。

　　The researchers monitored noise levels and hand gestures.

　　研究者對他們使用發出的噪音以及手勢進行了監測。

　　Noise levels served as a proxy for verbal communication; gestures, for the non-verbal sort.

　　噪音可以作為有聲交流的替代方式，而手勢則對應無聲交流。

　　Dr King found that the only thing which explained the probability of lighting on the best patchwas gesture use, which peaked just before consensus was reached.

　　科恩博士發現唯一可以用來解釋存在選擇最好搜集區的可能性的原因是肢體語言的使用，并且這種肢體語言的使用在共識達成之前就已經達到了頂峰。

　　Noise levels remained more or less constant the whole time, suggesting that verbal messages were not as important.

　　在整個時間段內，噪音斷斷續續地得到了持續使用，這顯示有聲信息并不是那么重要。

　　Constant volume may hide the variable importance of what was said.

　　不間斷的聲音可能會影響不同重要性語言的傳達。

　　So, Dr King plans to repeat the experiment, controlling for the meaning of both utterances and gestures.

　　所以，科恩博士計劃重復試驗，以確認發音和肢體語言的意義。

　　Moreover, hand gestures are a relatively local signal.

　　況且，手勢是一種相對本土化的信號。

　　It remains an open question whether they are as crucial to success in groups larger than the half-dozen or so people typical of foraging parties in hunter-gatherer societies. Spoken contributions allow information to be disseminated rapidly to group members far away.

　　在采獵者社會群落中，典型的搜集者人數大約占到了一半左右，對于那些人數多于搜集者的群落，手勢是對于這些人的成功能否起到同樣的關鍵作用仍然是一個問題。

　　That may trump the importance of non-verbal messages as groups grow larger.

　　聲音可以將信息快速地傳播給遠處的部落成員。并且隨著群落的壯大，語言信息的重要性將超過非語言傳遞信息的重要性。

　　But if gestures convey some vital extra information, people in larger groups may limit theircommunication to nearby co-foragers.

　　但是，如果肢體語言可以傳達一些額外的重要信息，那么在較大群落中，人們會將交流范圍僅限于附近的搜集者。

　　This might lead to the emergence of subgroups.

　　從而導致此次群落的出現。

　　How all this pertains to the “hunter” in “hunter-gatherer” has yet to be investigated.

　　關于以上這些是如何影響采獵群落中的狩獵者目前還沒有相關調查。

　　Getting a project on that past an ethics committee might involve an interesting act ofcommunication in its own right.

　　如果繞開道德層面來開展研究項目，其本身就是一種有趣的交流方式。

　　Sodium montmorillonite can be freeze-dried into a spongelike material known as an aerogel. Aerogels are famously fragile. But that is because they are mostly empty space. Indeed, they are sometimes nicknamed "solid smoke". This fragility disguises an underlying stiffness. Filling the pores in the aerogel with plastic should remove its fragility and, conversely, the networkof clay molecules in the aerogel will stop the plastic cracking. So the researchers reckoned that if they mixed casein with the clay and added glyceraldehyde (which substitutes for thepoisonous formaldehyde used in the original plastic), they might be able to make something really rather useful.

　　蒙脫土可以被冷凍干燥成一種叫做氣凝膠的海綿狀材料。因為主要是空心，所以氣凝膠是一種有名的易碎材料。事實上，它們有時候也被戲稱為 "固態煙"。 其實，他們的易碎性掩蓋了他們堅強的一面。如果將酪蛋白塑料灌入氣凝膠的細孔，那么氣凝膠將不再易碎，相反，氣凝膠中粘土分子的網狀系統同樣會防止酪蛋白塑料破裂。所以，研究者們認為如果他們將酪蛋白與粘土混合在一起并添加甘油醛(用來取代原先塑料中所使用的含毒性的甲醛)，將形成一種非常有用的材料。

　　To test their ideas the team mixed a solution of casein with glyceraldehyde and sodium montmorillonite and vigorously stirred the result to get rid of the bubbles before freezing it at 80°C below zero. Once frozen, the material was placed in a freeze-dryer that removed all the water from it over the course of four days. It was then cured for 24 hours in an oven at 80°C above zero.

　　為了驗證他們的想法，研究小組將一瓶酪蛋白溶液與甘油醛及蒙脫土進行充分混合以去除氣泡并在零下80度下進行冷凍。在冷凍后，將此材料在冷凍干燥機中放上4天以去除所有水分。隨后，再將其在80度烤箱中存放24小時。

　　The researchers report in Biomacromolecules that their new material matches the stiffness, strength and compressibility of expanded polystyrene, a common packaging material that is thebane of many a rubbish dump. However, unlike polystyrene, it goes away once it has been dumped. An initial experiment suggested that 20% of it vanished within 18 days in a dump-likeenvironment. A comedown, perhaps, from being a queen's brooch. But far more useful.

　　研究者們在《生物大分子》雜志上的報告稱他們的新材料在硬度，強度以及壓縮性上均可以與發泡聚苯乙烯相匹敵，而后者則是一種常見的包裝材料同時也是垃圾場中的一大公害。但是，與聚苯乙烯所不同的是，這種新材料一旦被丟棄并會分解。一個早期實驗顯示，在諸如垃圾場的環境中，此新材料在18天內便可分解20%。也許，它也不再適合做女王的胸針了，但卻有更大的用途。

　　To test their ideas the team mixed a solution of casein with glyceraldehyde and sodium montmorillonite and vigorously stirred the result to get rid of the bubbles before freezing it at 80°C below zero. Once frozen, the material was placed in a freeze-dryer that removed all the water from it over the course of four days. It was then cured for 24 hours in an oven at 80°C above zero.

　　為了驗證他們的想法，研究小組將一瓶酪蛋白溶液與甘油醛及蒙脫土進行充分混合以去除氣泡并在零下80度下進行冷凍。在冷凍后，將此材料在冷凍干燥機中放上4天以去除所有水分。隨后，再將其在80度烤箱中存放24小時。

　　The researchers report in Biomacromolecules that their new material matches the stiffness, strength and compressibility of expanded polystyrene, a common packaging material that is thebane of many a rubbish dump. However, unlike polystyrene, it goes away once it has been dumped. An initial experiment suggested that 20% of it vanished within 18 days in a dump-likeenvironment. A comedown, perhaps, from being a queen's brooch. But far more useful.

　　研究者們在《生物大分子》雜志上的報告稱他們的新材料在硬度，強度以及壓縮性上均可以與發泡聚苯乙烯相匹敵，而后者則是一種常見的包裝材料同時也是垃圾場中的一大公害。但是，與聚苯乙烯所不同的是，這種新材料一旦被丟棄并會分解。一個早期實驗顯示，在諸如垃圾場的環境中，此新材料在18天內便可分解20%。也許，它也不再適合做女王的胸針了，但卻有更大的用途。