Take your nose on a stroll down memory lane with vintage perfumery. The Vintage Perfume Vault features fragrance reviews and articles on perfume history. Perfume Shrine offers articles on perfumery including essays on the science of fragrance and aroma materials, interviews with perfumers and industry professionals, trend-watching. Inspiration in Perfumery profiles Henri Robert, Andre Fraysse, Ernest Beaux and Edmond Roudnitska. More about olfactory delights from 1000 Fragrances. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Nov 6, 2009 - 24 comments

Video of Dictyophora Indusiata. "When they find it, they sniff it. The scent of this mushroom causes sexual arousal, often to the point of orgasm." ^ Other interesting articles available from Aphrodisiology: List of Aphrodisiacs l Visual Stimuli l Pheromones & Perfumes. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Oct 2, 2008 - 49 comments

"There's no Brad Pitt of smell," Herz says. "Body odor is an external manifestation of the immune system, and the smells we think are attractive come from the people who are most genetically compatible with us." [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam on Jan 31, 2008 - 41 comments

Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World. From the main page, click on the various articles to access a larger left-side menu, with articles including Illusions Reveal The Brain's Assumptions, A Hot Spot in the Brain's Motion Pathway, The Value of Having Two Ears, The Memory of Smells and much more.
posted by amyms on Dec 5, 2007 - 2 comments

A mouse has been genetically engineered to no longer fear cats. Surely this is now only a matter of time. [more inside]
posted by leibniz on Nov 8, 2007 - 29 comments

Do You Taste What I Taste? - The first of Slate's 3-part series on the physiology of taste [parts 2, 3]
posted by Gyan on Jul 15, 2007 - 13 comments

Like old cheese and vomit, mixed with dog food ... Halitosis and aged cabbage ... Rank Swiss cheese ... Sour milk ... Pee in the air every day ... Like an open corpse ... Like a musty homeless person decomposing in musky homeless person urine ... Caramel with a slight undertone of mildly rank underarm ... Rodenticide. It's Gawker's New York City Subway Smell Map.
posted by Urban Hermit on Sep 26, 2006 - 17 comments

The Smell of War -- the Institute for Creative Technologies preps Quake-happy teens to become first-person shooters in the non-virtual war on terror. Now in Odorama.
posted by digaman on Jul 25, 2006 - 22 comments

My shit doesn't stink. I'm serious—my mother told me so. So there. Abstract of study published in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, "My baby doesn't smell as bad as yours: The plasticity of disgust", found here.
posted by emelenjr on Jul 12, 2006 - 28 comments

Luca Turin on perfume and other things. The Emperor of Scent and CTO of Flexitral reviews perfumes and waxes philosophical in his blog. Also available online: Parfums: le guide (PDF, French).
posted by greatgefilte on Nov 5, 2005 - 6 comments

Good smell perplexes New Yorkers How odd the city smelled sweet, like maple syrup, and all over: up in Harlem, downtown, in Astoria, Park Slope, other parts of Brooklyn. And what was it? A breakout of MSUD and public urination? Or something more fortean or more sinister?
posted by kingfisher, his musclebound cat on Oct 28, 2005 - 120 comments

Is the aroma of burning flesh putting you off your lunch? An Israeli company called Patus is marketing a new product called Odor Screen to EMTs, soldiers, cops, and medical staff who work at the sites of suicide bombings, combat zones, and other modern catastrophes. The Proustian link between smell and vivid memories is well established, and by displacing traumatic odors with a "calming vanilla aroma," the company hopes to lessen PTSD in first responders, and that's no laughing matter. [via medgadget]
posted by digaman on Feb 9, 2005 - 26 comments

Zicam is an amazing intranasal gel that shortens the duration and reduces the severity of the common cold. I've had four colds so far this fall (I've got a toddler) and all of them disappeared within a day. Problem is, now reports are saying that if you get this stuff too far up your nose, you could lose your sense of smell. Damn!
posted by fungible on Nov 9, 2004 - 15 comments

What does blue smell like? A novel theory contends that humans smell the frequency of a molecule, rather than shape (full study, pdf). In fact, there is no evidence to support either theory, leading to the question, how do humans smell? Inspired by bonehead.
posted by grateful on Jul 12, 2004 - 31 comments

Starving Bacteria of Iron Helps Wipe Out Body Odor. Scientists find that blocking bacteria's supply of iron works better at suppressing B.O. than the traditional deodorant method off killing off the bacteria with ethanol.

"expert odor assessors who sniffed the participants' armpits found that the experimental combination worked better than ethanol at reducing odor, with longer-lasting effects."

Just when you think *your* job stinks. Now, when will they come up with a way to suppress the Indian cooking odor in my apartment building?
posted by Tubes on May 21, 2002 - 16 comments

It is said that on a hot day, you can still smell traces of molasses in the city.
I had never heard about this until I met someone from Boston. As they say, wicked....
posted by machaus on Jul 26, 2001 - 7 comments

Smellovision ("Digiscents") demoed at Comdex. Scan down to the fourth paragraph for an informal review.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Nov 16, 2000 - 15 comments