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Browsing by tag: olfaction

The most odoriferous English language writer I know

Posted by Robin on 21 August 2016 3 Comments

Orwell is the most odoriferous English language writer I know. Norman Mailer would be second on the list, with passages such as this from An American Dream: “a deep smell came off Kelly, a hint of a big foul cat, carnal as the meat on a butcher’s block... With it all was that congregated odor of the wealthy, a mood within the nose of face powder, of perfumes which leave the turpentine of a witch’s curse, the taste of pennies in the mouth, a whiff of the tomb.”

—  John Sutherland, the author of Orwell’s Nose: A Pathological Biography, is anosmic. He writes about the "much-needed solace" of reading about smells in A nose-blind reader's guide to the world's most pungent prose at The Telegraph.

Couples that smell together, stay together

Posted by Robin on 15 July 2016 6 Comments

Could a smell-based fingerprint also predict the quality of a relationship? That’s the subject of a forthcoming study, in which Sobel’s team took olfactory fingerprints from 222 couples—some of whom had been together a short time, others who had been married 35 years—and interviewed them. There was a “frighteningly strong” link between how similarly couples perceived the scents of the world and the success of their romantic relationship, Sobel says. Couples that smell together, stay together.

— Time looks at the current research on smell and romantic compatibility. Read more at Love in the Stenches.

Tuna cans in a glass of bad cabernet

Posted by Robin on 14 July 2016 6 Comments

When Laudamiel walks around New York City, he says, the city’s many aromas don’t just blend together into something inscrutable. He smells hints of wood and green bell peppers in a cup of coffee, tuna cans in a glass of bad cabernet, spinach in fine green teas at the market, and notes of freesia and mushrooms in Central Park in the morning. “Once the brain has seen something, it can recognize it in other places,” he says.

That’s a phenomenon I can attest to: As a perfume lover who has spent the past few years smelling hundreds of different fragrances, I can now identify and understand odors that would have barely registered before.

— Courtney Humphries talks to perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, and others, about smell, in We Weren’t Designed to Appreciate Good Perfume at Nautilus.

What a smell looks like

Posted by Robin on 13 June 2016 2 Comments

Your Monday morning science lesson: Nsikan Akpan of NPR walks you through Cracking the Olfactory Code, an odor research project at the University of Colorado Boulder. They are working to teach robots to smell. You can read more at What a smell looks like at NPR.

Particularly noxious

Posted by Robin on 11 June 2016 2 Comments

It's no secret that when abroad, travelers often find local residents' body odor particularly noxious. Now a study published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA shows that the degree of disgust we find in others' sweat may depend on whether we are thinking of them as part of our social group or as outsiders.

– Read more at Body Odor Is Less Offensive from "One of Us" at Scientific American.

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