THE SCENT OF A WOMAN.

Humans communicate by silent sexual chemistry, scientists have proved for the first time. Pheromones are odourless, invisible and air-borne chemicals. Ants, moths and beetles have to send each other messages. Hamsters choose a mate with them, while male elephants use them to signal dominance. Biologists have always believed that humans too give off pheromones and can detect them in others at sub-conscious levels. There is a future trade in supposedly aphrodisiac products based on human pheromones. Psychologists report definitive evidence that humans respond to pheromones. Kathleen Stern and Martha McLintock, from Chicago, started from the observed fact that menstrual cycles of women living together are likely to coincide.
They collected underarm moisture on cotton pads from volunteers and dabbed the swabs - which also held alcohol - on the upper lips of other women. These women were asked not to wash their faces for six hours. The researchers did this daily for two months. The volunteers reported being able to detect only the alcohol under their noses. But more than two-thirds of the women exposed to the natural odours of another woman altered their menstrual cycle. A whiff of someone in one phase of the cycle moved others towards ovulation more swiftly. A swab taken at a different time had the opposite effect. Cycles were shortened by fourteen days, and lengthened by twelve days. The team concluded there are atleast two pheromones. John Pickett, of the Rothamsted Research Station in Hertfordshire, England, said though the compounds are yet to be identified, they could be developed to predict the onset of oestrus, for contraception "or for avoiding having a period" at an inconvenient time. Research might also soon explain why moods change by 'aromatherapy'. But pheromones are unlikely to lead people by the nose to love. Human passions are thought to be conditioned by social learning. "This opens the way for potential diagnostics", said Dr. Pickett, "but not for getting a partner at a disco".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VIEWS OF MANU AND KAUTILYA ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

The state performed its duty of protection of society and the individual through coercive enforcement of the standards of justice based on the concept of ' Dharma '. From the Vedic period onward, the perennial attitude of Indian culture had been justice and righteousness. Justice, in the Indian context, was a human expression of a wider universal principle of nature and if men were entirely true to nature, their actions would be spontaneously just. Men experienced Justice, in the sense of a distributive equity, as moral justice, social justice, and legal justice. Each of these forms of justice was viewed as a particularisation of the general principle of the universe seen as a total organism. Impartial administration of justice was always regarded as one of the main duties of the King and he was considered to be the fountain of justice. The ethical code of society and its cultural standards were inter-related. The cultural maturity and social amicability and even their det...
Read more

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER TOMBS IN EGYPT DATING BACK 2,000 YEARS.

Egypt's antiquities ministry said on 14th August, 2017 (Tuesday) that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period. The discovery was made in the Nile valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-kamin al-Sahrawi. The unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Read more

ANCIENT INDIA'S LINKS TO TODAY.

You may not have heard of Shu-ilishu but he is a man of great significance. He reaches out to us from almost 4,300 years ago, through a small Akkadian cylinder seal now housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. On the seal, you will find an image of him talking to two men. The inscription describes Shu-ilishu as the interpreter of the Meluhhan language. 'Meluha' was, in all probability, the term used by ancient Mesopotamians for the Indus Valley region, and the presence of an oficial 'interpreter' there indicates just how important the steady flow of good from the Indian sub-continent was.  Precious and vibrant lapis lazuli stones, carnelian beads, wood and even dogs would go across via old trade routes and ports like Lothal (in modern-day Gujarat) to Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire (03rd millennium BCE) and now in modern-day Iraq. There are also references to a settlement of Meluhhans in the city of Guabba in Sumer, in Mesopotamia.  The story of Shi-ilishu and ...
Read more