I had an idea for a test involving the effects of pheros in handshaking, but then we hit winter glove season here, so I never got around to doing the test. Then I stumbled across the following paper this week:
“A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking” Idan Frumin, Ofer Perl, Yaara Endevelt-Shapira, Ami Eisen, Neetai Eshel, Iris Heller, Maya Shemesh, Aharon Ravia, Lee Sela, Anat Arzi, Noam Sobel. eLife 2015;4:e05154
I don’t know this e-journal well, so I can’t vouch for it, but the paper has a bibliography to explore. I’ll start a separate thread in the Studies and Abstracts forum, for those who want to follow up.
Hands can be a problematic application point. As a physician, I have a long habit of washing my hands often, so I wondered if I could create an unobtrusive, convincing hand-wipe “towelette” pouch, suitable for low/dilute doses of pheros.
For my first packet, I placed a 1" (25mm) gauze square toward one end of a rectangle of thick aluminum foil, folded the foil over the gauze, then folded the three open edges toward the same side. I applied an inkjet printer-label (available at any office supply store) over the folded edges.
I tried both square labels (applied over the side I folded the edges toward) and rectangular address labels (folded to cover both sides), both printed with captions/logos to resemble generic disposable towelettes. They both looked quite convincing on casual inspection.
I don’t necessarily trust the seal very much, so I keep them in tiny ziplock bags that I keep on hand to store tiny electronics components. I still don’t trust them fully, but they may be good enough to hold a dilute phero and lotion mix for an evening or maybe a weekend.
One could use weather-proof/plasticized mailing labels, or apply clear mailing tape over a completed pouch and then trim. Both of these looked fine, but they were hard to casually tear open for use. I didn’t do any testing to see if either one improved the overall sealing vs paper labels.
I also made a pouch using wax paper instead of foil (ironing the edges to melt the wax into a seal). The mailing label didn’t stick well to the wax paper, but it made a convincing ‘commercial packet’ if the mailing label was large enough to overlap the edges of the wax paper and stick to itself.
I thought I’d share these ideas for your own experiments. There are obvious potential pitfalls in actual use, so please develop the idea further for your own needs. I only looked at the appearance of the completed packets. I didn’t use actual pheros and sniff-test them for leaks.
Even within plastic ziplock, the seal will never equal a proper commercially made packet, but it may be good enough for your own experiments.