The role of odors in bat mating behavior

Posted by Robin on 19 February 2021 2 Comments

Male birds may sport flashy feathers to attract females, lionesses prefer lions with thicker manes and colorful male guppies with large spots attract the most females. But bats are active in the dark. How do they attract mates? Mariana Muñoz-Romo, a senior Latin American postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and National Geographic explorer, pioneers research to understand the role of odors in bat mating behavior.

— Read more in Is odor the secret to bats' sex appeal? at Phys.org.

If smell was ignored before

Posted by Robin on 1 February 2021 2 Comments

If smell was ignored before, off in the hinterlands, you could say that Covid put it on the map. But studying smell, scientist after scientist told me, had already reshaped the way they thought about the world and their place in it. They went, they said, from thinking of smell as a “bonus sense” to a dominant one, and “from a secondary sense to one of the primary things that influences our life.” The geography had shifted even as they were working to chart it.

— That's the last paragraph of a very long article about the Covid pandemic and olfaction, written by Brooke Jarvis, who has anosmia. Even if, like me, you feel you've now read enough on the subject of Covid-related loss of smell, you might want to read this one (or listen to the 55 minute audio recording). See What Can Covid-19 Teach Us About the Mysteries of Smell? The virus’s strangest symptom has opened new doors to understanding our most neglected sense. at The New York Times. Hat tip to Kevin!

The odor-sensing components of a Yellow Fever mosquito

Posted by Robin on 27 January 2021 2 Comments

In a new paper published in Science Advances, Takeuchi and colleagues did just that. They tapped the odor-sensing components of a Yellow Fever mosquito (yikes), and rebuilt the entire construct with synthetic biology. Using a parallel chip design, they then carefully placed these biological components as an array onto a chip and monitored the setup with a computer.

— The Biohybrid Systems Laboratory at the University of Tokyo is working on an AI nose. Read more in Scientists Made a Biohybrid Nose Using Cells From Mosquitoes at Singularity Hub.

Smell-based communication

Posted by Robin on 28 December 2020 Leave a Comment

Smell-based communication has been mooted for some time, but in 2021 we will see sophisticated ways of encoding, recording and reporting olfactory signals. Processing of olfactory data will be added to search-engine/voice-search queries and integrated with multimedia information for sales, marketing, public messaging and educational purposes.

— Read more in We’re about to start sending messages with our noses at Wired.

The smellicopter

Posted by Robin on 9 December 2020 2 Comments

Melanie Anderson, a PhD student at the University of Washington, introduces the Smellicopter: "a drone that uses a live antenna from a moth to navigate its way toward a smell".

Older articles »

Perfume talk	New fragrances
Shopping	Books :: News
Body products	Home fragrance
Polls	Another subject

Robin	Jessica
Angela	Kevin
Erin	Guest Author

Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

The role of odors in bat mating behavior

If smell was ignored before

The odor-sensing components of a Yellow Fever mosquito

Smell-based communication

The smellicopter