美國紐約和洛杉磯等地最近流行一種新的交友方式：聞睡衣，找朋友。據悉，這種特別的交友方式是由加州一位女性首創的。她在不同城市舉辦的這種交友聚會叫做“費洛蒙派對”，所有參與者均需提交一件自己近期穿過的睡衣。組織方將這些睡衣按性別分類并編號后放在聚會現場，參與者用鼻子感受這些睡衣上的氣味，然后選出自己最中意的一件。組織方會對每位參與者及其選擇的睡衣進行拍照，然后將照片貼在墻上，這樣睡衣的主人就可以現身，跟喜歡自己氣味的那個人相識了。這種交友方式看似奇特，其實是有一定科學依據的。之前有研究發現，一個人喜歡哪種氣味是由掌管免疫系統的一組基因決定的。人類的嗅覺器官能夠識別很細微的基因差異，而人們更喜歡那些與自己基因構成有差別的氣味。

The get-togethers - which have been held in New York and Los Angeles and are planned for other cities - ask guests to submit a slept-in T-shirt that will be smelled by other participants.

Sniff your way to love? Singles who attend so-called pheromone parties haven't ruled it out.

The get-togethers - which have been held in New York and Los Angeles and are planned for other cities - ask guests to submit a slept-in T-shirt that will be smelled by other participants.

Then, voila! You can pick your partner based on scent, or so the theory goes.

The parties started as an experiment in matchmaking by a California woman weary of online dating, but it turns out they also have a root in science. Researchers have shown that humans can use scent to sort out genetic combinations that could lead to weaker offspring.

At an art gallery in Los Angeles on a recent night, partygoers huddled around several tables covered with plastic freezer bags stuffed with shirts and an index card bearing a number. Once they found one they liked, a photographer snapped a picture of them holding the bag and projected it onto a wall so the shirt's rightful owner could step forward and meet his or her odor's admirer.

Judith Prays, a Web developer, said she came up with the idea for pheromone parties after she failed to find a match online. Prays said she'd date men for a month or so before things soured until she started seeing a man who wasn't what she was looking for and wound up in a two-year relationship.

What she remembered was his smell.

"Even when he smelled objectively bad, I thought he smelled really good," the 25-year-old said. "And so I thought, OK, maybe I should be dating based on smell?"

At first, it was an experiment. Prays invited 40 friends to a party in New York and asked them to sleep in a T-shirt for three nights, put it in a plastic bag and freeze it, then bring it to the party. Bags were coded with blue cards for men and pink for women and numbered so the shirts' owners could pinpoint their admirers.

The night was a hit, Prays said, adding that half a dozen couples hooked up and one pair formed a relationship. Since then, she has held similar parties in New York and Los Angeles and is planning others for Atlanta and San Francisco.

Research studies using similar T-shirt experiments have shown that whose smell a person prefers is dictated by a set of genes that influence our immune response - which researchers say is nature's way of preventing inbreeding and preserving genetic adaptations developed over time.

"Humans can pick up this incredibly small chemical difference with their noses," said Martha McClintock, founder of the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago. "It is like an initial screen."

In one such study, McClintock and her colleagues had participants sniff inside a covered box without knowing that in some cases they were smelling worn T-shirts. What they found was people preferred the odors of those who had different genetic makeups from their own, but not radically different.

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(Agencies)

Vocabulary:

pheromone: 費洛蒙，一種由動物體分泌出來且具有揮發性的化學物質，它可使同種動物在不同個體之間，透過嗅覺的作用而傳遞訊息，產生行為或生理上的變化。

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）