The hard-working nurses of Hospital Number 3 in the northeastern Chinese city of Handan may not often feel like smiling as they go about their work, but now they have a way do so.
The officials at the hospital have ordered them to practice the correct way to show their pearly whites by holding a chopstick between their teeth, the Chinese equivalent of saying “cheese!” often said by people who want to be pictured, the German News Agency reported.
The nurses were pictured practicing ahead of “World Smile Day”, which the country celebrated on Tuesday.
The use of a chopstick to create a smile is widespread in the service industry of the People’s Republic of China. The chopstick is placed as far back as possible to push up the corners of the mouth and display the teeth.
A British study had showed that the dynamics of how men and women smile differ measurably, enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically assign gender purely based on a smile.
Although automatic gender recognition is already available, existing methods use static images and compare fixed facial features. The new research, by the University of Bradford, is the first to use the dynamic movement of the smile to automatically distinguish between men and women.
Led by Professor Hassan Ugail, the team mapped 49 features on the face, mainly around the eyes, mouth and down the nose. They used these to assess how the face changes as we smile caused by the underlying muscle movements including both changes in distances between the different points and the width of the smile.
They then tested whether there were noticeable differences between men and women and found that there were, with women's smiles being more expansive.
The Science Daily website cited Ugail who said: “Our study confirmed that women have broader smiles, expanding their mouth and lip area far more than men."
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