爲什麼有的人特別惹蚊子？

Two or three times a month, Leslie B. Vosshall, the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, at the Rockefeller University, is required to feed the subjects under inquiry in her lab. In order to do so, she rolls up her sleeve and inserts her arm into the netting cage in which the creatures in question, mosquitoes, are kept. It’s not unusual for her to get two hundred and fifty bites in a few minutes, she explained the other day, with blasé good humor.
每個月都會有這麼兩三次，來自於Rockfeller大學神經以及行爲學研究實驗室的Lesile B. Vosshall教授就要喂她的研究對象食物。她會怎麼做呢？她會捲起他的袖子把自己的手伸進一個箱子裏，這個箱子裏養滿了他們的研究對象，蚊子。她事後毫無感情色彩的解釋說，對於她來說幾分鐘之內被咬250次其實很正常。

Vosshall is attempting to discover why some people seem more attractive to mosquitoes than others. “Some people are mosquito magnets—I think this has been reported anecdotally ever since there have been people,” she said. Vosshall herself is not particularly attractive to mosquitoes, unless she is sticking her arm into a cage of them. But last week, with mosquito season well under way, she visited Brooklyn to discuss the implications of her research for those New Yorkers for whom being made a meal of is an annual blight rather than a professional obligation.
Vosshall的研究目的在於探索爲什麼有些人就是更容易吸引蚊子一些。她說有些人就像蚊子磁鐵一樣，這個說法在有人的時候就已經被傳開了。但是Vosshall本人其實並不是一個非常惹蚊子的人，除非她把手伸進養着蚊子的箱子裏。就在上週，Vosshall在蚊子盛行的季節來到美國的布魯克林和紐約客的編輯們一起探討他的研究內容，當然對於這些紐約客們，被蚊子饕餮是一年一次的倒黴日子而不是研究必須。

First stop: the Union Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal. Vosshall, who is a tall forty-six-year-old with long light-brown hair, was dressed boldly, under the circumstances, in a short black-and-white shift that covered her arms but exposed her legs. Native mosquitoes, Culex pipiens, are more likely to go for the face and the neck, she explained; it’s the mosquitoes that carry malaria, Anopheles gambiae, that like biting the feet. For illustrative purposes, Vosshall had brought along a test tube containing fetid water in which centimetre-long larvae frantically squiggled.
第一站就是位於Gowanus運河之上的聯合街大橋。Vosshall這位46歲有着一頭棕發的高個科學家穿着非常醒目，她穿着黑白相見的上衣，但是穿着夏季的短褲，因此她的腿是路在外面的。他說美國本地的Culex popiens蚊子更傾向於叮咬臉和脖子；而傳播瘧疾的Anopheles gambiae則更喜歡叮咬腳部。爲了進一步講清楚事情，Vosshall從英國帶來了一個有大概1釐米左右長的蚊子幼蟲裝載一個實驗盒子裏，這些蟲在污穢的水裏快速的蠕動着。