Quick Sniffs

Speaking of Nasal NIMBYs, isn’t there a legal phrase in Latin that means “law firm of insufferable, overbearing douchebags”?

Someone’s taken the trouble of rating the “Top 5 Gassiest Dog Breeds.” No surprises—bulldogs and boxers both make the list—but I wish there was some data behind the rankings. [Via Tracey Beckerman.]

Is it the economy? Retail perfume theft is back in the news. Plus another big heist in Florida.

Do you have £35 burning a hole in your pocket? Then you can buy a scratch-and-sniff poster that “smells like the moon.” Hey, Buzz Aldrin, pull my finger!

And this exhibit of scented artwork sounds like fun.

Added October 16, 2010:

A new biography of Coco Chanel explores the business side of her success in fashion and fragrance.

Nasal NYMBY of the Month

Rosalind Rodburg is having trouble selling her $1.8 million apartment on West End Avenue because there’s a truffle shop twenty-one floors below.

Boo hoo hoo.

P.S. Hey, it’s tough times for the fungus, too.

P.P.S. Just find a sucker buyer with a specific anosmia to androstenone. Duh.

P.P.P.S. New York Times real estate columnist Christine Haughney compares truffle smell to “rotting carrots and lettuce.” Hunh? Oh, wait. She graduated from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Never mind.

ISDP: When the Magic Mushroom Farm Smells Like Dead People

It’s the thirteenth of the month again—a long two-and-half weeks until Halloween, but time to lift the lid on the month’s worth of stories that have accumulated in our “Favorites” folder since the last installment of FirstNerve’s most repellant feature.

In Geneva, Wisconsin, business owners complained to police about “a foul odor” coming from a neighboring building. You know what that means—and so do the cops. They entered the building on Kruger Road with the expectation that “the rancid odor was a rotting dead body.” (Read ISDP much, officers?) Instead, what they discovered was “an elaborate growing operation” for hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Psych! 

In the annals of ISDP it is often an alert citizen who notices an unusually disagreeable odor and reports it to police, who find the deceased. This was the case last month in Edwards, Mississippi. But the citizen in question deserves a special shout-out.

Clinton Police Chief Don Byington said the body was found after a farmer off Highway 22, near Edwards, noticed an odor when he went to tend his hogs at about 6:45 p.m. on Friday.

The guy works on a pig farm but can still pick up the scent of human decay? We say bravo.

The deceased was an 81-year-old woman; an autopsy determined that the cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head and neck. A 39-year-old man has been charged in her murder as well as that of his 68-year-old aunt in Alabama.

Tenants of an apartment building in Brookline, Massachusetts, began complaining to the landlord about an “odor on the fifth floor.” When building management was unable to contact the owner of the smelly unit, where a week’s worth of mail was piled up, they forced their way in along with police. The body of the 28-year-old female resident was found inside. Foul play was not suspected.

Down near the Indian River Lagoon in Melbourne, Florida, residents had been smelling “a foul odor.” They called police, who searched the area but found nothing. A few days later a local fellow found the body of an unidentified adult male among the mangroves on the lakeshore.

Finally, we close as we opened: with an incident that strictly speaking does not qualify as an ISDP event. Call it a pre-odorized demise. It happened in Florida on October 1.

A 48-year-old Orlando man apparently committed suicide Friday morning using a poisonous gas inside his car while parked at an Interstate 95 rest stop in Fort Pierce.

Just before 6 AM, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper found a car reported as suspicious because of a sign warning “Do not approach — hydrogen sulfide.” A foul odor was in the air around the car. The rest stop was closed while an investigation got under way.

The deceased appears to have used common household chemicals to produce a fatal concentration of the rotten-egg-scented vapors, a method recently popularized in Japan. 

Endanger innocent people and emergency workers on your way out? Nice work, pal.

The Great Pheromone Debate

By far the most contentious topic in the chemical senses is whether or not humans produce and respond to pheromones—sex pheromones in particular. That this is still a matter for debate, fifty years after the coining of the term “pheromone”, will surprise some people. Others, like myself, are simply frustrated that despite thousands of experiments and scientific publications, the issue is not yet settled.

My sense of the field is that things are changing and a resolution may be at hand. It’s something I hope to explore on FirstNerve in the coming weeks. 

To start things off, I’ve linked to this excellent mini-lecture by Dr. Tristram Wyatt, a specialist in pheromones and chemical communication in the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology. His topic is “Success of the smelliest: Pheromones and evolution.” In twelve minutes, Wyatt puts the notion of human sexual pheromones into a clear and concise historical context. Have a look.

Answers from the New Emperor of Scent

We've heard back from Thomas Prevenslik. Here is what he had to say.

FN: When and why did you start thinking about quantum electrodynamics (QED) and olfactory receptors?

TP: Luca Turin contacted me about 4 months ago with some questions about QED radiation.

FN: Have you ever smelled deuterated benzaldehydes? Were they what you expected?

TP: No, I know very little about smell.

FN: How many languages do you speak or read?

TP: English, but some Chinese.

FN: Would you agree that Or Black by Pascal Morabito is “an extreme fougère, smoky, dark, bitter, resinous-green, like triple-distilled Earl Grey, a step beyond even Rive Gauche pour Homme in its saturnine glory”?

TP: Have no idea.

FN: How convincing did you find the 2007 Brookes et al., paper on olfactory receptor activation by inelastic electron tunneling? Did it motivate your new thinking on QED and smell?

TP: Marshal Stoneham sent me the paper a few weeks ago. Like all tunneling phenomenon, I thought it was difficult to understand and concluded with handwaving. But this has been going on since Marcus. Very few people understand the Marcus theory, but it is accepted. The basic problem here is that a source of EM energy is not available to produce the shape or vibration signal from the odorant molecule - so since Marcus, tunneling is thought to explain electron transfer. Perhaps, QED theory will change that.

In fact, some one other than Turin knowing that I have proposed that nanoparticles (NPs) emit ioionizing radiation in cancer suggested that perhaps odor molecules are also emitting EM radiation. A NP is like and odorant molecule in that both are similar to NPs, a necessary condition in the QED theory.

In tribochemistry, QED theory argues electrons and photons are produced by rubbing NPs off the surfaces. The residual kT energy that the atoms had while a part of a macroscopic body is not allowed by QM, so QM requires the NPs to get rid of the kT energy by EM emission.

With regard to smell, my results to date suggest that IR and VCD emission is likely emitted from the odorant molecules, again after acquiring the kT energy in colliding with the nose surface. But ionizing radiation is not likely produced as in tribochemistry. Nevertheless, if the G-receptors can detect the IR and VCD emission to produce a signal to the brain,then the QED mechanism will certainly challenge both shape and vibration theories.

Some experimental test to demonstrate that non-ionizing IR and VCR radiaton cause the odors we smell would prove the QED theory. If you know of any experimental groups that can produce odor from IR/VCD radiation, let me know. I am a retired American now in China and living in Hong Kong, China, and Berlin.

FN: Who would you rather have formulate your personal cologne: Annick Ménardo, Bertrand Duchaufour, Yohji Yamamoto, or Jean-Claude Ellena?

TP: I use my own personal smell.

FN: Have you found it difficult to publish your new vibrational theory of olfaction in peer-reviewed scientific journals? Do you think there is an effort to silence vibration theorists?

TP: I have not tried to publish, yet. But would expect opposition from both shape and vibration theorists as well. There is always an attempt to silence new scientific theories. If you look at my home page, you will see that I have challenged almost every theory in physics with the QED theory, e.g., the QED theory shows the Hubble redshift is caused by cosmic NP dust, and therefore the Universe is not expanding. So, you see I have a enemies in astronomy as well.

FN: Is 1981 Château Lamothe Despujols really all it’s cracked up to be? What’s your favorite Sauternes?

TP: Have no idea.

FN: Has a tall, socially awkward guy been following you around taking notes? If not, why not?

TP: Have no idea.