If unattached, older women hope to attract men, they must smell like teenage girls. That’s the finding of researchers at Harvard University, where hormonal scents, or pheromones, isolated from a young woman’s armpit sweat were dabbed on 22 post-menopausal women. Another group of women received placebo dabs. During the next six weeks, 68 percent of the pheromone users experienced substantial increases in what the researchers referred to as "four intimate, sociosexual behaviors." In other words, the pheromone users partied until the cows came home. The most interesting part of the study was the statement in New Scientist magazine that neither the researchers nor the women knew who was in each group until the study’s end. That seems highly unlikely. The post-menopausal women who splashed on pheromones every morning and were suddenly attracting men of all ages like magnets must have noticed a difference in their lives. They must have asked themselves plenty of questions. "Is it the new support stockings? Could it be the tooth whitener I’ve been using? Could it possibly be the stuff the researchers dabbed behind my ears that’s attracting men like so many flies?" So if you’re a post-menopausal woman from the Midwest and you take a vacation in the Boston area, and a researcher from Harvard offers to spritz you behind the ears with some unidentified scent, be forewarned. After your return home, be prepared for the following changes: When you’re leaving the local grocery store, the carryout boys from the high school tussle with each other in a frantic attempt to carry your groceries to the car, but they don’t know why they’re acting that way. When you offer the local car dealer considerably less than he’s asking for a new car, he smiles helplessly, flutters his eyelids and whispers, "OK." You’ve lost any semblance of personal space when people are around. Men, in particular, hover around so closely you would think they need extra body warmth to make it through the rest of the winter. But you know that can’t be the reason — it’s sunny, it’s 70 degrees outside and it’s July. Countless men of all ages appear out of the blue, grab your arm and help you across the street, even when you don’t want to go there. With all of the unnecessary street crossings, your shopping trips to town are at least twice as long as they should be. Even when they don’t have packages to deliver to your house, the UPS and FedEx guys have begun showing up at your door just to ask how you’re doing. The mailman now hand-delivers the mail to your door rather than leaving it in the mailbox at the end of the driveway. "It’s the least I can do, " he confides, with a tip of his hat and a wink of his eye. "What are YOU wearing?" finally demands one woman in your bridge group. "You smell like a sweaty gym locker room!" A new twist on an old expression comes to mind — instead of "one man’s trash is another man’s treasure," this time it’s "one woman’s sweat is another woman’s perfume." At this point you recall that you had to break three dates to play bridge in the first place, and you vaguely remember the Harvard researchers dabbing some stuff behind your ears. Ah, that must be it.