But there is hope. New research by the University of Dresden’s Smell and Taste Clinic found that the part of the brain responsible for processing smell can grow with exercise, sort of how bench pressing pumps your pecs. Even those with just an average sense of smell can increase the size of their olfactory bulbs via a regimen of trying out four aromas, twice a day, for about 30 seconds each.

— Read more at How to Improve Your Sense of Smell—and Why You’d Want To at Bloomberg.

They also had participants in a different experiment take a whiff of a historic book from 1928, and were initially surprised to find that many of the people described it as “chocolate-y.” That ended up making sense, in a way, they said, because from a “chemical point of view,” coffee and cocoa contain “identical” compounds to those in decaying paper. Other descriptions included, “coffee,” “old,” “rotten socks,” and “mothballs.”

— Researchers at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage have developed an "Historic Book Odour Wheel". Read more at The Odor ‘Wheel’ Decoding the Smell of Old Books at Atlas Obscura.

Adults who received approximately four hours of sleep the previous night were exposed to odors like potato chips or cinnamon rolls, as well as nonfood scents like fir trees. Weeks later, the same participants were asked to sniff the same scents after receiving a full eight hours of sleep.

When exposed to the aroma of foods, subjects who were sleep deprived showed more brain activity in their piriform cortexes and orbitofrontal cortexes - two regions of the brain associated with smell.

— Read more at Do you eat more when you're tired? Blame your nose, says study at WCBV.

Olfactory receptors had been demonstrated in various healthy as well as cancerous tissues. The Bochum-based researchers have now detected the OR51B4 receptor (upregulated) in colorectal cancer cells. They identified the molecule troenan as activator of OR51B4. It smells of privet, a flowering shrub that is often cultivated in hedges.

— Read more at Olfactory receptors: New molecular targets detected in colorectal cancer cells at Science Daily.

If you bite a juicy ribeye, some of its molecules bind to taste receptors on the tongue—giving the basic sensations of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami—while other, more volatile odor molecules waft up the back of your mouth into your nose. This retronasal smell signal merges with taste signals in the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex to give a more complex sense of flavor.

— Read more at The Science That Could Make You Crave Broccoli More Than Chocolate at The Atlantic.