More on Stewardship & Social Responsibility

A group of teenagers from an activist group called Teens Turning Green recently stormed a San Francisco Abercrombie & Fitch in protest of the store’s policy of scenting their outlets with their signature scent, “Fierce.” A former Aberbrombie employee identified only as “Lemondrop” claimed that the scent was overpowering to the point that employees would “…start to get dizzy.”
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The Asparagus Effect

If you can’t think of any non-comedic value in that distinctly sulfurous odor of a person’s urine after they eat asparagus, you’re probably not a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center.
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The Endorphin Branding™ of Breakfast

When Professor Tim Jacobs undertook the unusual task of looking into the reason people tend to choose toast as a breakfast staple, the study led him directly to a phenomenon the Whiff-Guys have dubbed Endorphin Branding™.
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Green Eggs & Science

Did you know that the eggs of the African Clawed Frog have exemplary ability to express olfactory receptors?

Nobuo Misawaa, Hidefumi Mitsunob, Ryohei Kanzakic, and Shoji Takeuchi did. That’s why the University of Tokyo research team employed the eggs in creating their novel new robotic nose.
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A Debilitating Olfactory Phobia

It may be the most common syndrome you never heard of. Sufferers of a disabling psychiatric condition called Olfactory Reference Syndrome (ORS) are convinced that they emit horrible smells and, as a result, often isolate themselves or even attempt suicide.
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Olfactory Mathematics

The lack of adequate equipment to study the motion of the planets in the 16th Century did not prevent Nicolaus Copernicus from accurately demonstrating that the sun was not, in fact, at the center of the cosmos. Through mathematics, the brilliant astronomer was able to disprove the convoluted logic of his contemporaries by mapping the trajectories of the planets correctly if and only if the sun - not the earth - was placed at the center.
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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.”
-Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Sidda Walker was not experiencing a breakdown when she burst into tears on the streets of New York, she was merely reacting normally to a phenomenon the Whiff Guys have dubbed endorphin branding™. Read more

Scents and the City

From Mystery Methane Scents to Decidedly Good Scents to Inexplicable Maple Syrup Scents to city cops with Absolutely No Scents, New York City has provided a wealth of olfactory fodder for the Whiff-Guys over the years. And, as it turns out, we’re by no means the only entity to stick our noses into the diverse aromas of this diverse city.
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New Baby Smell!

Expectant mothers leaning toward natural childbirth but not toward the pain associated with labor may find the solution right under their noses.

At Southmead Hospital in Bristol, U.K., 24 midwives have been trained to employ aromatherapy as natural pain relief for patients giving birth at the hospital and in their own homes. Bergamot, jasmine, lavender, peppermint, grapefruit, clary sage and frankincense are being mixed and administered by the midwives via massage, bath, or smelling stick.
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NIDCD Investigates the Olfactory Impact of 9/11

Attendees of this year’s NIDCD Annual Meeting of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences Conference (April 21-25 at St. Petersburg’s Tradewinds Grand Isle Resort) are in for some unusually fascinating topics. Among the headliners slated for discussion are a newly discovered area of the brain where smell and sound converge (see the Whiff-Guys’ look into Smound) and a study into the long-term olfactory effects of toxic exposure on responders to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
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