Science Forums 2

[Michaelangelica]

What is it with popcorn.
a perfumer friend even showed me a pocorn fragrance he made.

Worms Take The Sniff Test To Reveal Sex Differences In Brain
In the experiment at the University of Rochester Medical Center, worms that are hermaphrodites (with characteristics of both females and males) went for the buttery smell, while the males -- the other of the two sexes in these worms -- opted for the scent of fresh vegetables.

But when researchers tricked a few nerve cells in hermaphrodites into sensing that they were in a male worm, suddenly they too preferred the smell of fresh vegetables.

Bizare research?
BUT this is what they say:-

While the olfactory likes and dislikes of the tiny roundworm known as C. elegans is the stuff of distinctive cocktail conversation, trivia is the furthest thing on the minds of Rochester scientists who did the study, which is being published in the Nov. 6 issue of Current Biology.

Geneticist Douglas Portman, Ph.D., and graduate student KyungHwa Lee ultimately hope to understand gender differences in diseases like autism, depression, and attention-deficit disorder. Many more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADD and autism, and many more girls than boys are diagnosed with depression. While proposed explanations abound, few scientists debate the notion that the brains of the sexes are in some ways fundamentally different.

The experiments with humble C. elegans, nearly invisible to the naked eye and common in soil worldwide, make up one way that scientists are exploring the roots of a host of conditions that affect the human brain. The research project was funded by Autism Speaks, an organization dedicated to autism awareness and research.

Smell You Later: Scientists Reveal How Mice Recognize Each Other

ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2007) — Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that mice rely on a special set of proteins to recognise each other.
. . .
"These major urinary proteins (MUPs) act like a 'chemical barcode' of individual identity -- each individual has a slightly different set of proteins, allowing each animal to be easily recognised.
. . .
even humans, with their relatively poor sense of smell, tend to like the odor of individuals that have different MHC genes from their own,

Smell You Later: Scientists Reveal How Mice Recognize Each Other

Sorry could not resist this one

Why Dinosaurs Had 'Fowl' Breath

Why Dinosaurs Had 'Fowl' Breath