Nocturnal tobacco hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) use their keen sense of smell to find nectar rich flowers or plants on which to lay their eggs. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology are looking to answer the question of how the moths distinguish between different smells.

With so many smells in the world, how can moths pick out those that are essential for their lives from those unnecessary whiffs?

— Read more in Tobacco hawkmoths are incredibly sensitive to important smells at Earth.com.

Before this study, researchers speculated that mosquito brains must have a complicated, sophisticated technique for distinguishing humans from other animals. Quite the opposite, it turned out.

"The simplicity surprised us," said McBride. "Despite the complexity of human odor, and the fact that it doesn't really have any kind of human-specific compounds in it, the mosquitoes have evolved a surprisingly simple mechanism for recognizing us."

— Read more in How mosquito brains encode human odor so they can seek us out at ScienceDaily.

When construction wraps up, Josefina del Mármol's new laboratory on the Harvard Medical School campus will look a lot like those that surround it, with rows of benches sporting chemicals, glassware, and computers.

What will set it apart are the scents: the citrus aroma of a compound called limonene; the clove-like fragrance of another compound, eugenol; the pungent odor of geosmin, reminiscent of a damp cave.

"It does smell quite unique because I use dozens of different odorants for my experiments," she said. "Some are pleasant, and some are awful, and the scent often lingers."

— Read more in Scent of a Human: Researcher probes mysteries of smell through disease-carrying insects at Harvard Medical School.