In a new study from the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WNPRC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers found that marmoset dads that get a whiff of their own babies experience decreased testosterone.

"We were a little surprised to see testosterone alter like that," says Toni Ziegler, a staff scientist at the WNPRC and the senior author of a study published Sept. 2 in the journal Biology Letters. [...] "These moderations may allow him to be more tolerant toward his infants while facing external challenges that might distract him from focusing on his infant and family needs."

— From Baby's smell tamps down dad's testosterone levels at Physorg.

A common form of skin cancer could be diagnosed by the distinctive chemical "scent" it gives off, say US experts.

Philadelphia's Monell Center sampled the air directly above basal cell carcinomas and found it was different to similar samples from healthy skin.

— Read more in Machine 'sniffs out skin cancer' at BBC News.

The next time someone says, “I smell danger in the air,” that might literally be true — and the odor might be coming from you.

At the tip of the noses of mammals, including humans, is a ball of nerve cells known as the Grueneberg ganglion [...] Only in last few years, after scientists devised strains of mice that glow green under fluorescent light, did they deduce that the Grueneberg ganglion is a component of the olfactory system.

— Read more in How the Nose Sniffs Danger in the Air at the New York Times.

Yet for all the meagerness of our hardware, we humans can become better nosehounds with startling ease. In one experiment, Dr. Gottfried said, subjects exposed to a single floral scent for just three and a half minutes markedly improved their ability to discriminate among whole families of flower odors.

— From The Nose, an Emotional Time Machine at today's New York Times.