While chemistry is no doubt at play, the sensation of disgust is also highly dependent on emotional and social context, he adds. Cheese perfectly illustrates the complexity of this response. For instance, “If you mix butyric and isovaleric acids you can either get a very strong sensation of vomit, or of Parmesan cheese, and it's completely dependent on context whether that is disgusting or pleasant,” he says. “Similarly, the smell of fecal matter on a farm is less disgusting than the odor emanating from a porta potty at a music festival.”

— Read more at What Stinky Cheese Tells Us About the Science of Disgust at Smithsonian magazine.

Dr. Dalton and her team found that with repeated exposure, the women’s ability to detect the odors improved 100,000-fold: the women were able to detect the odor at a concentration 1/100,000th of the concentration they needed at the beginning of the study.

But the male subjects, on average, showed no improvement at all in their ability to detect the odor.

— Read more at Why Stinky Socks May Bother Women More Than Men at The New York Times.

The emotional facial expression of others influences how positive or negative we perceive an odour. The basis of this effect seems to be the activity of a brain area that is relevant for smelling and is activated even before we perceive an odour.

— Read more at How the emotions of others influence our olfactory sense at Science Daily.

What we eat can influence more than our waistlines. It turns out, our diets also help determine what we smell like.

A recent study found that women preferred the body odor of men who ate a lot of fruits and vegetables. Whereas men who ate a lot of carbohydrates gave off a smell that was less appealing.

— Read more at Men, Listen Up: Women Like The Smell Of Guys Who Eat A Certain Diet at NPR.