All posts tagged: smells

Why spring smells like semen and rotting fish

Why spring smells like semen and rotting fish

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Ah, spring. The sun is out, the streets are humming, the days are getting longer, and the air smells like… like… um… say, can anyone else smell that? It’s not just me, right? Right?? It’s not just me. All over America, spring is getting smellier every year, and the culprit is the Bradford pear, a tree that gained popularity in the mid-20th century for its ornamental properties. But it has since proven to be kind of a nightmare. As well as its distinctive smell (described as smelling like rotting fish, sweat, or semen), it has a nasty habit of shedding branches during storms. Its hardiness makes it awfully difficult to get rid of, to the extent that it’s now considered invasive in most of North America. Oh, and you can’t eat its fruit, either, because it’s full of cyanide. The tree isn’t just a problem here in the US, either. In my home country of Australia, we have a …

Comedian Diane Morgan says cheese now ‘smells like socks’ after vegan switch

Comedian Diane Morgan says cheese now ‘smells like socks’ after vegan switch

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Comedian Diane Morgan, known for her distinctive deadpan humour, has revealed a surprising personal transformation, embracing a vegan lifestyle that has even altered her perception of cheese – a former culinary love now described as smelling “like socks”. The 50-year-old, currently starring in Last One Laughing on Prime Video, made the switch last January. While she was “never a big milk drinker anyway”, preferring oat milk, cheese proved a significant hurdle. “I couldn’t find a decent vegan cheese that I liked – it all tasted like glue sticks – so I just went cold turkey on it,” she explained. The shift in perception was stark: “Then, after four weeks, my brain just went, ‘Oh, I don’t like cheese anymore, it smells like socks’. So now I don’t crave it at all.” Morgan, who resides in central London, advocates for everyone to …

Parkinson’s disease may reduce enjoyment of pleasant smells

Parkinson’s disease may reduce enjoyment of pleasant smells

Published by skeptic

Testing how much pleasure people get when sniffing a lemon could be a novel way to detect Parkinson’s disease Getty Images People with Parkinson’s disease seem less able to enjoy pleasant smells, such as lemon. The discovery has led scientists to conclude that “the world smells different” with the condition. Utilising this could help doctors cheaply and non-invasively diagnose Parkinson’s disease, a process that usually takes several years and involves a raft of assessments. Loss of the sense of smell is a core symptom of Parkinson’s, affecting 75 to 90 per cent of cases and often preceding the tremors commonly associated with the condition by years or even decades. There have been many efforts to use the loss of smell as a diagnostic tool, but these have been complicated by the fact that this sense also declines with healthy ageing. Now, Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues have tried a different approach: testing smell perception. The team recruited 94 people, most of whom were in their late 50s …

Weed that smells like paint thinner takes over Arizona

Weed that smells like paint thinner takes over Arizona

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Invasive plants can be just as destructive as animals—and often fly more under the radar until it’s too late. In parts of Arizona, stinknet (Oncosiphon piluliferum) really stinks. The noxious yellow weed gives off more than just an offensive smell; it’s also destroying native wildflowers critical to the ecosystem. Bright yellow stinknet weed growing in Arizona. Image: Zach Duncan. What is stinknet? Stinknet is an invasive annual weed. It grows during the winter and can then crowd out native plants and become a fire hazard during the summer. According to The University of Arizona, it is spreading in Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties. It is also spreading in Nevada, California, Mexico, and Australia. It can grow in a wide variety of habitats, including yards, desert riparian areas, urban sidewalk cracks, and in disturbed or undisturbed soil. It is still not entirely clear when and how it got to Arizona. The Arizona Native Plant Society believes that it was through …

Goldman Sachs Head During Financial Crisis Says He “Smells” a Similar Crash Coming

Goldman Sachs Head During Financial Crisis Says He “Smells” a Similar Crash Coming

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech For quite some time, investors have been warning that the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into the buildout of enormous AI data centers could trigger a credit crisis. A recent Bank of America survey found that over a third of fund managers believe corporations are overinvesting in physical assets. Yet all told, AI companies are looking to spend a record-breaking $650 billion on AI in 2026 alone, an astronomical sum that has investors on edge, especially considering how massively unprofitable AI ventures have been to date. To Lloyd Blankfein, who led Goldman Sachs through the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, it’s entirely reasonable to prepare for an impending jolt to the system, especially considering the tone of investors discussing the enormous accumulation of debt. “I wonder where there’s hidden secret leverage,” he told Citadel’s cochief investment officer Pablo Salame during a recent interview, as quoted by The Telegraph. “Now everyone says, ‘Oh, the world’s not leveraged.’” “That’s exactly …

Yum! Flies swarm to a flower that smells like wounded ants

Yum! Flies swarm to a flower that smells like wounded ants

Published by skeptic

behavior: The way something (often a person or other organism) conducts itself or acts towards others. biology: The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists. botanical: Having to do with the field of biology that focuses on plants. The scientist in this field is known as a botanist. bug: One of many species of small insects with mouthparts that evolved an ability to pierce and suck liquids from a plant. Also a slang term for any insect. chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H2O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds. dupe: To fool. evolve: (adj. evolving) To change gradually over generations, or a long period of time. In living organisms, such an evolution usually involves random changes to genes that will then be …