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An Arousing Scent

2007 May June New Food and Farming

September 18, 2009

An exhausted star basketball player leaves the court and is mobbed by female fans who can’t resist him, or his soaked jersey. Is it his good looks, or a chemical and biological response to his musk that has attracted them?

Claire Wyart and colleagues doing research for the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute tested the female response to male pheromones by asking 48 undergraduate women to sniff either androstadienone—a chemosignal in male sweat—or the control of baker’s yeast, and then watch emotionally charged videos.

They found that the women who sniffed the hormone— and were in a good mood—were more sexually aroused within 15 minutes, and their mood remained elevated for more than an hour

More from the 2007 May June New Food and Farming issue

Wilding The Farm

Many modern farms—where “clean” fields and monocultures rule—lack key elements of a functional ecosystem: a broad diversity of insects, wildlife, trees, and plant species. But in the past 30 years a revolution in thinking about native plants and beneficial insects has reinforced the importance of maintaining wild areas on farms. Matthew Wheeland reports on three […]

Can the City Save the Farm?

New Ruralism—an eclectic outgrowth of farmers and urban planners—wants to remarry town and country. Even if you’re only the slightest bit familiar with California’s $30 billion–plus farm economy, you may have heard the lament: urban development is steamrolling the state’s agricultural belt. Every day, bountiful fields surrender to big-box stores, fast-food restaurants, and residential sprawl. More […]

The Whole Meal

Alice Waters is crusading to change not just what kids eat, but what they learn. The building where Alice Waters wants the 900 students of Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley to eat their lunch is currently a construction site, surrounded by chain link fence, a sign that says No Trespassing, and piles of brick […]