Breaking News English

Scientists have come up with answers to age-old question of why eyelashes are length they are. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology conducted variety of tests on lashes of 22 different mammals. One was to create special wind tunnel and artificial eye to provide mathematical models of how wind blew over lashes. conclusion of head researcher David Hu is that function of eyelashes is to help protect eyes from drying out and that optimal eyelash length for this to happen is one-third as long as eye is wide. Professor Hu found that across wide variety of mammals, ratio of eyelash length and eye width was consistently one-third.

Dr Hu started his investigation after birth of his newborn daughter. He wondered why his baby kept on batting her eyelids. He told International Business Times that: "Eyelashes that rim eyes in mammals have been mystery for long time as to what their function was. There were lot of hypotheses, from dust catchers to triggering blink reflex….What we did was first aerodynamic study of eyelashes. We showed using three independent means that eyelashes reduce evaporation of eye by 70 per cent, and they reduce [ deposits] of small airborne particles." A colleague said Hu had talent for, "looking at what everybody has looked at, and seeing what nobody has seen."