Olfactory Fact #229: Planets need Aromatherapy too

Terpene, the chemical that gives pine trees their scent, doesn’t just make the world smell better - it slows global warming by making clouds thicker, reflecting up to 5% more sunlight.

Online Shopping in the Multisensory Age

If there’s one problem that’s plagued the practice of online shopping since the birth of the Internet, it’s that shoppers really like to interact with products. They want to feel the texture and sniff the aroma and - in such cases as choosing a local restaurant or a box of Valentine chocolates - taste the wares, before forking over their hard-earned dollars.

Enter CD&I Associate’s The Sense, designed as part of the La Fin Du Design Exhibition, a wireless device that seeks to revolutionize online shopping by providing a way for consumers to smell, touch and taste their intended purchases before filling their cyber shopping cart. Sense is a combination of smell magnification system, smell and flavor-ink micro-printer, and a screen that is able to create a tactile experience of physical products. The micro-printer uses thirteen basic combinations of wax cartridges that print tiny translucent sheets to simulate flavors and melt in your mouth.

One of the most unique aspects about Sense is the touchscreen display which recreates the tactile experience through the use of nanotechnology. The user inserts his or her hands into the Sense sheath and is able to feel temperature, roughness, softness, hardness, or pressure. The device can be also be programmed with voice and read Braille text for the visually impaired. In addition to the experiences that come packaged with the device, new Sense applications can be downloaded from Internet.

When we Smell, we Feel

“Mama’s perfume…is a scent that is softly shocking and deeply moving. A scent that disturbs me and delights me. It smells like ripe pears, vetiver, a bit of violet, and something else - something spicy, almost biting and exotic. Once the scent caught me on the street in Greenwich Village. I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Where was it coming from? A shop? The trees? A passerby? I could not tell. I only know the smell made me cry.”
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Use Common Scents to Fight the Winter Blues

With the festive holiday portion of the season passed, those same elements that created winter wonderland magic in December can lead to an unpleasant lethargy beginning in January known as seasonal affective disorder. Cheery turns to dreary as cold temperatures, gray skies, barren landscapes, shorter days, and reduced activity bring on feelings of sadness, depression, and general loss of energy. Add to this the inclination to shut ourselves indoors against the frigid outside air, sometimes in the cramped company of loved ones who we find much more lovable in shorter doses, and irritability also becomes a major factor of the Winter Blues.

Before you give up and just curl miserably into a corner waiting for April–or lose all patience with Aunt Ethel who has asked you for the twentieth time, and tell her that yes, as a matter of fact, those new Christmas stretch pants do make her butt look big–why not take the opportunity to treat yourself to a whiff of aromatic relief that might just thaw some of your frozen holiday spirit for the remaining winter months? Not only can certain essential oils reduce seasonal stress and depression, they can cleanse and freshen stale air and even improve spacial perception in a winter-sealed home.

Woodsy scents are excellent for warding off seasonal depression. As the gray days grow shorter and the dark nights grow longer, we yearn for the life and light of warm sunny days. It’s more than holiday tradition that has induced us, since ancient times, to adorn our indoors with the outdoors at the onset of the cold season with fragrant branches of refreshing evergreens like mistletoe, holly, pine and fir. Likewise, the rich, sweet aroma of a frankincense and myrrh based blend is meditative and relaxing to the winter-weary heart.

Citrus oils are particularly recommended, as their fresh uplifting scent can melt away the anxiety and lethargy brought on by long periods of relative confinement (the practice of doling out lemons to seamen on months-long voyages may well have done more than prevent scurvy, it may have inadvertently prevented a mutiny or two as well).

Other essential oils especially useful during winter months include eucalyptus, rosemary, peppermint, tea tree, ginger, cinnamon, bergamot, clary sage, chamomile, and lavender.