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Foods and Smells
Image via WikipediaHow many flavors are out there? We often hear only about these five - sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory (umami), but there are so many more and they are important not only to our...
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Odor-prints: individual but genetic connections unclear
Odor is like fingerprints or facial features - it's unique. Yet no single measurement could be easily applied to recognize an individual. GC/MS measurements can be used to analyze mixtures of acids,...
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Hormonal Manipulation of Olfactory Cues, or How to Lose a Guy in 10 days
Image via WikipediaBody odors are important cues used for social and sexual discrimination. As was shown many times, animals can easily smell age-, health- and genetics-related differences. Recent...
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On cancers and petroleum spills
Researchers have known for years that smell of cancer patients is chemically different from healthy individuals. One more study featured in British Journal of Cancer brings us a bit closer to an...
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Of blood and breath: metabolite-based diagnosis of ovarian cancer
Physicians always knew that breath contains clues to diseases. Chemicals in breath often correlate with chemicals in saliva and blood - be it alcohol, anaesthetics or other metabolites (see, for...
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Colonoscopy for everyone! ..or Gonna Buy Me A Dog
New research from Japan brings good news: dogs can be almost as accurate as a colonoscopy exam. In patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) and controls, the sensitivity of canine scent detection of...
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What's that fatty odor?
Body odor is closely associated with diet. Deciphering the chemistry of human odor is not an easy task - only about 5% of odorous molecules are usually recovered from collection containers, and not all...
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The Road to Ammonia
Why do I smell like Ammonia? This question, in thousands of variations, has been asked over and over again at every major question/answer site, especially teen, bodybuilding and athletic forums.The...
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The smell of Christmas
How does Christmas smell like? Like cinnamon! So say studies by European scientists [1-3]. And even though the smell of cinnamon is described as "pungent" (besides "warm", 'sweet", and "spicy"), it...
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Studying body odor: one step at a time
Unpleasant body odors could be a sign of a disease. But even when the cause of the disease is known - an example is trimethylaminuria or TMAU - there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Elimination of...
View ArticleChemicals in food affecting body odor
Volatile compounds (complex organic and simple like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia), together with sugars and acids, are the main chemicals determining the characteristic aroma of food, as well as odors...
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Come out smelling like a rose
You are what you eat. And you smell like your food. Well, it's actually a bit more complicated - as we emit complex combinations of volatile chemicals produced from food by our own metabolic system as...
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Odors and Infections
Many illnesses are associated with distinct odors. Especially those caused by infectious or opportunistic microbes inside the body or on its surfaces. Body odor of someone infected with C. difficile,...
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Inhale and feel it with your heart
All you need is love. Or failing that chocolate.And not only because dark chocolate could lower the risk of heart disease, blood pressure and sugar levels. As Dr. Schieberle's team recently discovered...
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When it Smells Like Team Spirit
Why do we connect and collaborate, deciding to "walk in the light of creative altruism" instead of the "darkness of destructive selfishness"?Is it because of subtle behavioral clues that make us...
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I Know What You Ate This Summer
Despite active foodstagramming and foodteresting, and eagerness to show pictures of meals and diet reports to friends on social media, we don't really want others to know everything we eat. But they...
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Body Odor and Skin Bacteria
Our bodies are rainforests of microbes feeding off the leftovers from our meals and contributing to a variety of body odors. Human skin is inhabited and re-populated depending on health conditions,...
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The Smell of Stress and Fear
Can we recognize if people around us are stressed, anxious or fearful without observing their facial expressions, body language and actions or hearing their voice and messages? Can we understand if we...
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Seeing Through the Skin
by AURAMETRIXHuman skin emits light (albeit the glow is extremely weak) and a wide variety of small molecules that may be sometimes "sniffed" by dogs or even other humans. These chemicals tell a...
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Giving the underserved the care they deserve
Nobody likes strong smells coming from other human beings. It's just that social convention: you are nice, if you smell nice, and you are a monster - like Shakespeare's Caliban - if you smell bad. But...
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