The next time you stop to smell the roses, take a moment to consider how you are able to enjoy their perfume. Sniff the velvet petals, and a cocktail of aromatic molecules wafts across odor receptors within your nasal cavity. Each is located on an olfactory neuron that extends into the brain. Chemical compounds that tumble past will bind to and activate a variety of receptors and their neurons. Your brain decodes this pattern as the unmistakable fragrance of a rose.

— From On the Scent of Smell, which discusses recent work by John Ngai, Coates Family Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Functional Genomics Laboratory at UC Berkeley. Many thanks to Mary for the link!

Here we show that fathers exhibit more affection and attachment and fewer ignoring behaviors toward children whose smell they can identify than toward those whose smell they cannot recognize. Thus, olfaction might serve as a means for males to determine their genetic relatedness to purported offspring. We also demonstrate that mothers’ olfactory recognition and hedonistic ratings are linked with the use of physical punishment. Mothers report using more punishment with children whose odor they cannot recognize and less with children whose odor they rated as more pleasant.

— From A Preliminary Investigation of Parent–Progeny Olfactory Recognition and Parental Investment, originally published in Human Nature, with thanks to Jan for the link!