omeone might be a preferred snack, including blood type, blood sugar level, consuming garlic or bananas, being a woman, and being a child. Yet there is little credible data to support most of these theories, says Leslie Vosshall, head of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior.
In the three-year study, eight participants were asked to wear nylon stockings over their forearms for six hours a day. This process was repeated on multiple days. Over the next few years, the investigators tested the nylons against each other in all possible pairings through a round-robin style “tournament.” They used a two-choice olfactometer assay that De Obaldia built, consisting of a plexiglass chamber divided into two tubes, each ending in a box that held a stocking.
The participants were sorted into high and low attractors, and then the scientists set out to determine what differentiated them. They used chemical analysis techniques to identify 50 molecular compounds that were elevated in the sebum of the high-attracting participants. From there, they discovered that mosquito magnets produced carboxylic acids at much higher levels than the less-attractive volunteers.
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