
How to Smell (2018) - BIackSwan
http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2018/08/how-to-smell.html?m=1
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ibudiallo
Since I read _Perfume_ by Patrick Süskind, I smell everything. And the sense I
had associated with good or bad smells is disappearing. Now I just smell
things and etch the moment in my memory.

At night, I lay down and replay my day. I can still smell the moist in the air
before it rained today.

~~~
s5ma6n
This book and for that matter the movie has reignited my enthusiasm about the
smells. Whenever I go out for shopping, I stop by a perfumery to try random
perfumes. In time, I noticed that I can now identify some of the ingredients
of the perfumes. I highly recommend this practice as it also teaches you to
identify the quality of fruits/vegetables easily.

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jpalla
In some sommellerie school in France, you train your nose using an "aroma box"
([https://aromaster.com/fr/produit/coffret-master-aromes-du-
vi...](https://aromaster.com/fr/produit/coffret-master-aromes-du-vin/)). Being
interested into owning one for quite some time now.

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newnewpdro
This reminded me of the anecdote in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! where
he had his wife pick a book from a shelf and return it without his watching
then using smell alone successfully identified the book she had handled.

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z3t4
In chemistry we learned to explicitly _not_ put our nose against something to
smell it, instead wave your hand to get the particles into the air, and smell
carefully from a distance.

~~~
bloak
Yes, it's definitely good to avoid accidentally snorting the unknown
substance.

~~~
antihero
Nah it's great fun

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mjlee
When smelling lots of things that are somewhat similar (wines, coffees, etc.)
I have found you can get some sort of smell fatigue and stop being able to
easily differentiate smells.

One trick I have been taught is to smell something that's very different to
reset your senses. I've seen people use their clothes, the back of their hand,
etc.

~~~
hammock
Coffee beans are the go to for this. You'll find them in perfume stores,
wineries, etc. I guess it doesn't work when you're already smelling coffees
though..

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adim86
This article is very interesting. For some reason, somewhere down the line
humans evolved to use smell as a way to decide if something is worth engaging
with or not (Food, people etc) or to detect danger (smoke from a fire) but
like the author said. There is a whole world of smells that are just
interesting in themselves but humans never explore. I have never entertained
the intricacies of a smell I stop at if it is good or bad.

~~~
z3t4
In the server room next to my office I have a air cleaner/fan/filter so that I
do not have to clean the servers from dust as often. It will ramp up if it
detects dust or smell. It will for example ramp up if someone farts nearby
which is quite funny. I however have social anxiety, and when I'm on a phone
call, or just thinking about talking to someone I don't like, it will also
ramp up. I wonder what this smell does to someone's subconscious when I meet
them in person ...

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rathel
Interesting, can you share the model of the purifier?

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z3t4
Blueair. It looks like this one:
[https://images.app.goo.gl/E5XkvbkEsbHix5rZA](https://images.app.goo.gl/E5XkvbkEsbHix5rZA)

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cwkoss
Interesting article, will be thinking about smell this week.

Anyone have more articles about honing sense of smell? I have wondered about
making a 'calibration array' of esters with increasing lengths of carbon
chains or something like that.

What are the receptors in our noses detecting? Do similar smells always imply
chemical similarities? Can a trained nose eventually achieve something like
"this smells like it has a 3 carbon chain hanging off the 4-position on an
indole ring"?

~~~
cwkoss
Whoa

"Although deuteration does not appreciably change molecular shape, atom size,
or bond length or stiffness, it doubles hydrogen mass, thus affecting the
overall vibrational modes of an odorant. Therefore, if recognition of
molecular shape alone was the sole determinant for odor character (2, 3), then
flies should not respond differentially to deuterated [d, where d(x) denotes
replacement of x nonexchangeable hydrogens with deuterium atoms] and
nondeuterated/normal (i.e., H-) odorants. To address this hypothesis, we took
advantage of the commercial availability of acetophenone (ACP) carrying three,
five, or eight deuterium atoms (d3, d5, and d8) in place of the respective
hydrogens in the normal molecule (h-ACP). Equal amounts (75 μL) of each
odorant were diluted to 1 mL in isopropyl myristate and we quantified (Fig.
1A) the response of groups of flies to each odorant versus unscented air
traversing the arms of a standard T-maze (Materials and Methods) (19, 20).
When given a choice between normal ACP (i.e., h-ACP) and air, the excess flies
present in the odor-delivering maze arm indicated that, at the dilution used,
the odorant was attractive. However, replacing only three hydrogen atoms with
deuterium eliminated this spontaneous preference as the flies distributed
nearly equally in the arms of the maze. The d5-ACP was mildly aversive and the
fully substituted d8-ACP was the most aversive of the four isotopes."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048096/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048096/)

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_carl_jung
Thanks for this. I recently read a simple book on organic chemistry and
wondered the same thing.

~~~
cwkoss
Note that this was done in flies, and a similar test in humans did not find
ability detect deuteration.

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smoll
If I was any more in tune with my sense of smell, I don’t think I could live
in New York. Walking through most neighborhoods in Manhattan is an assault on
most of my senses, smell especially.

I haven’t lived in any other large cities in the United States (only a handful
in Australia), but is this a common experience for people living in other
large, dirty cities or am I just being overly dramatic?

~~~
rinchik
I wouldn't say it's true for every major city in US, but yes, unfortunately
NYC is decaying. NYC is mess you can't compare to Boston or, let's say,
Chicago. Current infrastructure is already stretched very thin, but that's one
thing, corrupt and incompetent local government deserves it's own story. If
residents don't get their shit together and start voting for the change, it
will all end badly.

