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Building on the idea that metaphors we use in language can influence our social cognition (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), Spike Lee had been busy exposing participants to fishy smells (made from a mixture of anchovy and sardine concentrates). What he wanted to test was whether these literally fishy smells would make people more suspicious of others.
In several studies, he found just that.
— Read more in What’s That Smell? The Psychology of Scent at Psychology Today.
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Soon after using her latest order, Wilson began suffering from a strange set of symptoms. Mysterious rashes appeared all over her body, and her forearms, neck, chin, and eyelids were red and covered in bumpy splotches. The folds of her nose burned. Everything itched. “I was miserable,” she says. “I was literally a tomato.” When her dermatologist suggested that her fancy detergents might be the cause of her problems, she brushed it off. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not it,’” she says. “I’ve been using this stuff for years.” Why would she suddenly have a problem now?
— Read more in Dirty Soap: The Laundress was the nice detergent on the market. Until people started breaking out into hideous rashes at The Cut.
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Because ants lack noses, they use olfactory receptors on their antennae to help them find food or sniff out potential mates. For the study, published Jan. 25 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences(opens in new tab), scientists trained nearly three dozen silky ants (Formica fusca) to use these acute olfactory receptors for a different task: finding tumors.
— Read more in Ants can detect the scent of cancer in urine at LiveScience.
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“Most Australians don’t understand how valuable this is, but occasionally, we see people slowly driving past,” [Tim] Coakley says, surrounded by rows of agarwood-producing Aquilaria trees arranged as neatly as the boxed citrus trees in the Orangery at Versailles. “We have cameras set up in the trees. If you go to Asia they have seven-foot walls and people wandering around with guns.”
— Read more in It costs up to $100,000 a kilo and Queensland farmers are growing it for luxury perfume at The Sydney Morning Herald.
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The way I remember the experience was very innocent. We sat with a group of people from Coty, we were just talking and they had some rough ideas, visuals to show me. We all gravitated towards this idea of a Daisy on a bottle. I don't know which came first: the name of the bottle or whatever. I had a dog named Daisy, and she got her name from Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby. Daisy is one of my favorite characters in literature. Plus, I love the irony of a floral coming from a flower that had no scent. So all those things appealed to me.
— Marc Jacobs on the creation of Daisy. Read more in Marc Jacobs Is a Fragrance Hitmaker—and He’s Just Done It Again at Harper's Bazaar.