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But these supersized snoots are constantly serving up surprises—and a group of researchers has now discovered that they’re discerning enough to distinguish more from less. Their study, published today in the journal PNAS, suggests elephants can use scent alone to differentiate between quantities of sunflower seeds that might flummox even the most hawk-eyed of humans.
— Read more at Elephants Can Use Scent to Distinguish More From Less at NOVA.
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People are born with synesthesia, and when you’re about a year old you lose it. Only five per cent of people walk around as adults with synesthesia. But the neurons you have now are the same ones you were born with. You can wake them up, and that’s what we’re going to try to do today.
— Perfumer Ron Winnegrad, talking to students at a workshop on synesthesia. Read more at Scents and Sensibility at The New Yorker.
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Scientists have sniffed out the chemicals that give some dark chocolates their smell.
The compounds that mingle to make the candy’s aroma include pleasant-smelling ones such as vanillin, which gives vanilla its smell, and flowery linalool. But other molecules produce smoky or vinegary odors and even one that smells like sweat, researchers report online May 8 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
— Read more at Sweaty, vinegary and sweet odors mingle to make dark chocolate’s smell at Science News.
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Mershin, however, believes that we don’t really have to understand how mammals smell to build an artificial nose. He’s betting that things will work the other way around: To understand the nose, we have to build one first. In his efforts with a brilliant mentor named Shuguang Zhang, Mershin has built a device that can just begin to give dogs—his panting adversaries—a run for their money.
— Andreas Mershin of MIT is trying to build a nose. Read more at The Quest to Make a Bot That Can Smell as Well as a Dog at Wired.
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Those who make a habit out of drinking coffee are more sensitive to its odor and are faster to identify its aroma. Additionally, their ability to sniff out the bean also increases the more they crave coffee. This study, its authors write, provides the first evidence that coffee addicts are more sensitive to the smell of coffee than the rest of us.
— Read more at Heavy coffee drinkers can smell its aroma much easier than other people — and it seems tied to craving at ZME Science.