An oh-my-God smell

Posted by Robin on 14 January 2022 Leave a Comment

At first he smelled nothing except the faint, sweet fragrance of the nearby trees.

Suddenly, the wind picked up. “We have an oh-my-God smell!” [Chemical engineer Chuck] McGinley exclaimed.

Immediately one of his colleagues pressed a Nasal Ranger to his nose. The 14-inch-long smell-measuring device, which looks like a cross between a radar gun and a bugle, is one of Mr. McGinley’s most significant inventions.

— Read more in Sometimes, Life Stinks. So He Invented the Nasal Ranger at The New York Times. Hat tip to HemlockSillage and Liza!

A landmine-hunting rat

Posted by Robin on 12 January 2022 2 Comments

A landmine-hunting rat that was awarded a gold medal for heroism for clearing ordnance from the Cambodian countryside has died.

Magawa, a giant African pouched rat originally from Tanzania, helped clear mines from about 225,000 square metres of land – the equivalent of 42 football pitches – over the course of his career. [...] Belgian charity Apopo trained Magawa to detect the chemical compounds in explosives by rewarding him with tasty treats – his favourites being bananas and peanuts.

— Read more in Landmine-hunting hero rat dies in Cambodia after stellar career at The Guardian. Hat tip to Jalapeno!

Smell a cup of coffee

Posted by Robin on 11 January 2022 2 Comments

Smell a cup of coffee.

Smell it inside or outside; summer or winter; in a coffee shop with a scone; in a pizza parlor with pepperoni -; even at a pizza parlor with a scone! -; coffee smells like coffee.

Why don't other smells or different environmental factors "get in the way," so to speak, of the experience of smelling individual odors?

— Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University, who are trying to "engineer bomb-sniffing locusts", did a study to find out. Read more in Locust study reveals a ‘surprisingly simple’ approach to recognize an odor at News Medical Life Sciences.

Scent is something else entirely

Posted by Robin on 6 January 2022 3 Comments

The science behind sight, taste, touch, and sound are lightyears beyond smell. Most cameras work better than human eyes, able to see spectrums of light invisible to us. Audio systems can hear wavelengths our ears can’t. Robots can now use an artificial sense of touch to carefully peel a grape. Some artificial flavorings are tastier than the real thing. Similar efforts to capture olfactory sensory experiences have fallen short because the physics behind how our brains smell isn’t as straightforward as other senses. Sight is photons, sound is compressed air. Scent is something else entirely. Roughly 400 receptor types can recognize millions of scents, combining them to create an overall smell.

— Read more in Digital Olfaction Brings Scent Systems Into the 21st Century at Propmodo.

The mechanisms of smell

Posted by Robin on 11 December 2021 Leave a Comment

But most smell scientists believe Covid-centric research will yield insights on the mechanisms of smell writ large — and new approaches to treating a wide array of olfactory issues. Notably, scientists still aren’t absolutely sure how Covid causes smell loss; the disease may actually be doing several things at once with the potential to affect smell, all in slightly different ways. However, emerging consensus holds that many cases of Covid-related smell loss are not the result of direct damage to smell receptors, or the olfactory nerve, but instead to the cells that provide structural support to them.

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

An oh-my-God smell

A landmine-hunting rat

Smell a cup of coffee

Scent is something else entirely

The mechanisms of smell