Posted by Robin on 18 Comments
A collective of concerned La Jolla business owners calling itself Citizens for Odor Nuisance Abatement recently sued the city of San Diego in hopes that authorities will take action and do something about the source of the offending odor: a cluster of rocks in La Jolla Cove that are used by sea lions, cormorants, and other forms of marine life as a communal latrine.
— I can personally verify that it stinks! Read more at Sea Lion Poop Gets San Diego Sued.
Posted by Robin on 2 Comments
She is a woman obsessed with smell. As head of a sensory ecology lab, she's spent the past two decades picking apart how seabirds' ability to detect scents is key to their survival. Nevitt had the good fortune to arrive in the field on the heels of a handful of pioneering bird olfaction studies. Yet changing long-held beliefs takes time, and the scientific community is no exception. Dozens of Nevitt's grant proposals have been rejected because of the birds-can't-smell fallacy. A program officer once called to say her application was the worst he'd ever seen. "Your idea that birds can smell is ridiculous,"he said. "This will never be funded, so stop wasting your time."
— Read more at Birds Can Smell, and One Scientist is Leading the Charge to Prove It, an article at Audubon magazine about Gabrielle Nevitt of the University of California-Davis.
Posted by Robin on 4 Comments
The research all started with smelly feet.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside, placed odor-collecting beads in their own socks to pick up a scent and placed them in an experimental wind tunnel with hungry mosquitoes, where the beads acted as a stand-in for a human.
— Read more at Mosquito Scent-Tracking Discovery Could Lead to Better Repellents at Scientific American.
Posted by Robin on 3 Comments
Using flower scents created in a lab, a team of researchers at Ohio State University plans to lure mosquitoes into traps. The objective: Kill the pests that carry life-threatening diseases, including West Nile Virus and malaria. “Think of the perfume industry. It’s the same approach, but we’re using it to trap mosquitoes for public-health purposes,” said Philip E. Otienoburu, an OSU entomologist.
— Read more at OSU researchers create fragrance mosquitoes can’t resist at The Columbus Dispatch.
Posted by Robin on 4 Comments
Why is it that the elite French perfumers (known as “noses”) and sommeliers (“upturned noses”) of the world spend so much of their time inhaling cat effluvia from expensive glass bottles? A guess: It may have to do with a mind-control parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. The tiny protozoan may be getting into our brains and tricking us into liking cats—not to mention certain perfumes and wines.
— Read more at The Scent of a Cat Woman at Slate. Hat tip to VanMorrisonFan!