Slashdot Mirror
Human Sense of Smell Underestimated
Benjamin Long writes to note a study, by a team of neuroscientists and engineers, that demonstrated that humans can follow a scent trail — an ability that most had assumed only animals possessed. Furthermore, the study demonstrated for the first time that humans make use of differential information from the two nostrils. The researchers blindfolded college students who crawled through grass to sniff out a chocolate-scented trail. Here is the abstract of the paper in Nature Neuroscience. From the article: "The humans, however, still sniffed much more slowly than dogs, which may partially account for canines' greater efficiency at scent tracking. [A commentator] says that despite their relatively sluggish speed, the fact that subjects improved with training is noteworthy. 'I think that shows the effect of our distinctively different behavior in actually using this sense,' he says. 'The dog [has] been doing this its whole life, and humans [were] just asked to plunge in the first time they've ever done it.'"
The researchers blindfolded college students who crawled through grass to sniff out a chocolate-scented trail. This just proves students will do anything for $10
If you can read this, it's already too late.
I was standing behind the server racks and I thought I could sqeeze off a silent fart without anyone noticing. Sadly the offending trouser bomb got caught up in the fans of a 4U Server. The cheese-scented ass gas was recirculated through every fan in the room evenly distributing its greasy essence all over the datacenter. None of my fellow technicians will speak to me since this awful and embarrassing emission.
The following replies are posted by unwashed nerds.
Most women can follow a chocolate scented trail, oddly enough the scent trail left by diamonds and currency works just as well. On the flip side most men are able to scent track women so I guess there's balance in nature.
They eventually found the 'chocolate' left behind by the dog.
...no one knows you're a dog. Until you start bragging about your scent-tracking superiority, then you've given away the game.
I found a beak in my 25 piece value-lunch-tub-bucket-meal.
Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em
Maradona has proved it many times some years ago keeping track of some white dust...
How do you think I find my way to the computer science classroom?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Pictures pls.
A guy is on an elevator alone.
A beautiful girl gets on.
He says "Hey, can I smell your pussy?"
She says "NO!".
He says "Oh, must be your breath."
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The researchers blindfolded college students who crawled through grass to sniff out a chocolate-scented trail.
Sure... "researchers".
This is one of those weird Japanese game shows!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Your antecdote only further proves that you are in fact, a werewolf. And of course you didn't use your hound dog. You tore that poor thing apart during the last full moon.
On the flip side most men are able to scent track women so I guess there's balance in nature.
Men can also scent track fish.... suppose those two scent tracking skills are related?
There are already highly trained human noses already out there
For example, experienced sommeliers and cheesemongers probably have even more fined tuned senses of smell (at least within their areas of expertise) than most pet dogs. Not blood hounds, mind you, but especially sight hounds and working dogs. Being able to identify ten or twelve different aromas and tastes within one glass of wine is a distinct skill, and I doubt many dogs can do it.
At least, I know mine can't. But then, he can be a mean drunk, so maybe that's the real problem.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
OK, I'm going to have to say some disgusting stuff in the service of science.
There's an easy experiment to demonstrate that humans have the ability to distinguish smells very finely. The point is, humans (at least the ones I know) don't mind the smell of their own farts, but can't stand the smell of others. This means that humans have the ability to distinguish between their own farts and the farts of everyone else. Now there are three obvious classes of mechanism for this:
(1) Humans can distinguish between their own farts and every else's - ie. they can partition fart smells into self and non-self
OR
(2) Humans can distinguish between everyone's farts.
OR
(3) Various shades in between.
Now consider hypothesis (1). This is pretty preposterous. Chemical sensors in our nose that can only distinguish fart smells into two classes, self and non-self, would be ridiculously specialised. So we're left with (2) or (3).
Now consider (3). To the extent that you can't distinguish self from non-self, there are people's whose farts you can't distinguish from your own. In other words, (3) implies there are other people whose farts you don't mind. This is simply too disgusting to contemplate and no benevolent deity could have created a universe like this.
So we are led to conclusion (2).
Anyway, I think more experiments are needed. I think this is an example of low hanging fruit if someone is seeking an Ig Nobel prize.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The ten dollars you would have earned could be exchanged for many chocolate bars.
Explain how?
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.