The Smelly Web Indexes: February 7, 2010

For the week ending February 7, 2010:

The Solo Blog Index

Close: 113
Change: +1 
Big movers: IndiePerfumes +42%, FirstNerve +12%, AnyasGarden +11%, Vetivresse -33%, GlassPetalSmoke -26%, AyalaSmellyBlog -26% 

The Team Blog Index
Close: 121
Change: -2
Big movers:  PerfumedaRosaNegra -7%

The Corporate & Community Site Index
Close: 70 
Change: +8 
Big movers: TheDryDown +14%, Sniffapalooza -7%

Summary

Huge volatility in the Solo Blog Index this week: steep declines at Vetivresse, GlassPetalSmoke and AyalaSmellyBlog offset by a massive increase at IndiePerfumes and solid gains at FirstNerve and AnyasGarden, resulting in a one point uptick in the SBI. PerfumeSmellinThings was the only gainer on the Team Blog Index which sank two points. The Corporate & Community Site Index bounced back big time from two consecutive record lows, driven by a large gain at TheDryDown.

Pee-yew! Epic Fail of Waterless Urinals in Chicago

They’re ripping out the “eco-friendly” waterless urinals installed in Chicago’s City Hall only four years ago. Why? Because the smell of backed up urine was drifting into the City Council chambers.

What caused the urine to back up?

“While we don't know for certain, anecdotal evidence has pointed to the heavy traffic, combined with the disposal of additional liquids, such as juice, coffee, etc. being poured down the urinal drain that caused issues that were unforeseen,” [Environment Department spokesman Larry] Merritt said.

Guys pouring coffee down the urinal? Who could possibly have anticipated that?

In fairness, City Hall’s problem—that the urinals were connected to copper drain pipes which corroded and blocked outflow—may be specific to that building. But judging from my experience at Newark airport even properly installed waterless urinals are remarkably stinky. Of course, nothing says “welcome to New Jersey” like a bad smell in baggage claim.

Then there’s this:

In 2005, five waterless urinals also were installed in O’Hare Airport’s Terminal 2, only to be removed three months later.

Hmmm . . .

The “green” urinals in City Hall were the brainchild of Mayor Daley’s “chief environmental officer” Sadhu Johnston. And what does he have to say about the problem? Well, nothing! He quietly slipped out of town last September and is now deputy city manager of Vancouver, WA.

See you, Sadhu--and as they like to say up North: Piss off!

Popping Corks in the Chem Lab: The Molecular Analysis of Wine

When it comes to figuring out at the molecular level why things smell the way they do, there is no better scientific source than the quaintly titled Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 

Published by the American Chemical Society, the journal’s very first issue—in April of 1953—included the paper “Atmospheric odors, their effect on flavors of stored foods.” Authors Amos Turk, P. J. Messer and Arthur Blaskiewicz reported that air purification with activated charcoal significantly reduced the off odors that otherwise migrate into foods stored in a smelly environment. It’s a topic as relevant now as it was fifty-seven years ago.

Today’s journal reflects the revolution in fragrance and flavor analysis achieved by gas chromatography—mass spectrometry in the mid-1970s. (See? It wasn’t a totally lost decade, Jimmy Carter and leisure suits notwithstanding.) It’s were I found my WTNK material for the aroma similarities of lychee fruit and Gewurztraminer wine, the freshness (or not) of Moroccan sardines, and the characteristic smell of Asian fish sauce.

Recently, three new papers caught my eye—all having to do with wine. The first, by a Belgian research team, examined the molecules responsible for the changes of aroma in Sauternes as it ages. Sauternes from the 2002 and 2003 vintages, donated by Château Guiraud, were tracked through March 2009 by old fashioned sniffing and a battery of technology: gas chromatography—olfactometry (GC-O), aroma extract dilution analysis, gas chromatography—mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and (best of all) gas chromatography—pulsed flame photometric detection.

So what did they find? Well, a bunch of the polyfunctional thiols (sulfur-containing molecules like 3-sulfanylpropyl acetate) that give young Sauternes “the distinctive citrus nuances of young botrytized wines” are lost during the first year in the bottle. Other key odorants were still present five to six years after harvest, including fermentation alcohols like 2-phenylethanol and molecules such as vanillin, eugenol, and β-damascenone, which arise from the wine’s maturation in oak barrels. There was also α-terpineol which gives Sauternes its varietal aroma and sotolon, last noted hovering over the New York metropolitan region and triggering false medical diagnoses in the Middle East.

You don’t have to be a chem geek to be fascinated by this: now we know the whys and wherefores of how Sauternes changes character in the bottle. That’s just cool. And it hardly detracts from the allure of the wine or the joy experienced in the drinking of it. The perfume industry should be taking notes. (Yes, Rochelle Bloom, I’m talking to you.) 

The second JAFC paper is by a French team who looked at low-concentration chemicals responsible for the berry notes in red Bordeaux wine. (These days fruity white wines are all the rage, but compounds associated with fruity aromas have been detected in reds as well. Berry notes in wine include red and black cherry, plum, black current, raspberry and strawberry.) 

The French team, led by Bénédicte Pineau, fractionated various reds using methods designed to preserve as much of the fruity character as possible. They used GC-O and GC-MS analysis to identify the responsible molecules, and then spiked de-aromatized wine with specific chemicals to reconstruct the fruity aroma profiles. They found that “black berry” aroma was associated with higher levels of ethyl propanoate, ethyl 2-methylpropanoate, and ethyl 2-methylbutanoate. “Red berry” aroma was linked to ethyl butanoate, ethyl hexanoate, ethyl octanoate and ethyl 2-hydroxybutanoate.

All good and quite informative. But what really grabbed me were the odor threshold results. Most of the red- and black-berry aromas in Bordeaux were present at levels below those detectable by the human nose; nevertheless they contribute to the fruity character of the wine. It’s a phenomenon I addressed in WTNK: the myriad naturally-occurring odorants that hover just beyond direct detectability, yet which somehow add to our sensory experience of food and drink.

The third JAFC paper to catch my eye was by a Japanese team led by Takayuki Tamura at the Mercian Corporation. They investigated the fishy aftertaste that can occur when wine is paired with seafood. Using dried scallop as the sample seafood, a sensory panel rated all sorts of red and white wine for fishy aftertaste. Chemical analysis revealed that fishiness was positively correlated with the concentration of total iron and ferrous ion in the wines. Adding ferrous ion to a model wine boosted the fishy aftertaste; chelating the iron (soaking it up with a molecular sponge) reduced fishiness. Finally, the molecules responsible for fishy aftertaste (hexanal, heptanal, and 1-octen-3one) are increased when dried scallop is soaked in wine with higher levels of ferrous ion.

Tamura et al. deliver an open-and-shut case: iron is essential in causing the formation of fishy aftertaste in wine and seafood pairings. Very cool.

So tonight let’s lift a glass and savor the fruity notes; take a sip after some seafood and note the result; and finish things off with a nice Sauternes. Cheers!

Olfactory Genius: Smells Real and Imagined

What are the dimensions of olfactory talent? Everyone’s first guess—that smell sensitivity separates perfumers from the rest of us—is certainly wrong. What does set experts apart is the ability to think about odors in a certain way. For the olfactively gifted smells are easily discernable, almost palpable objects hedged round with associations and synaesthetically linked to sounds, colors and shapes. In other words, pure nose power is overshadowed by the cognitive talents of memory and imagination.

The ability to imagine a specific smell—to summon it up from memory in a vivid way—is central to smell creativity, whether the result is a perfumer’s formulation or the invocation of scent by a poet or novelist. In What the Nose Knows, I spend a chapter describing three traits of creative olfactory genius, drawing on the work of writers, musicians, and other artists. 

As a scientist working in the perfume industry I tackled the topic empirically. Along with my colleagues Sarah Kemp and Melissa Crouch, I created an olfactory version of a standard research questionnaire used to measure the vividness of a person’s mental imagery. We gave the Vividness of Olfactory Imagery Questionnaire (or VOIQ) to perfumers and other fragrance professionals, and compared their scores to those of non-experts. The perfumers had more vivid mental impressions of smell. In another study, I found that high odor imagers bought and used fragranced products more than low odor imagers.

Since then other researchers have found that VOIQ score predicts all sorts of odor-related behaviors. For example, psychologists Richard Stevenson and Trevor Case studied smells during dreaming.

They discovered multiple links between dream smelling and smell ability in the waking world. First, olfactory dreamers experience both visual and olfactory imagery more vividly than non-olfactory dreamers. Second, people with more vivid mental imagery for smells have more vivid smell dreams. A follow-up experiment found a third link: olfactory dreamers are better at identifying odors in a smell test. 

All of this suggests to me that some people are simply more tuned into odors than others. Smell-oriented people—those who identify odors accurately and imagine them vividly—tend to dream in smell as well. Olfactory talent shows itself all around the clock.

In recently published experiments, psychologist Catherine Rouby and co-workers at the Claude Bernard University of Lyon, France take things even further. Rouby gave the VOIQ (and its original visual version, the VVIQ) to 30 people, who then rated the smell of carvone, isoamyl acetate, and limonene for intensity, pleasantness and familiarity.
 
A second study also began with 30 people who took the VOIQ and VVIQ, but only the eight top-scoring good imagers and eight bottom-scoring poor imagers proceeded to the next stage: rating cineole, isoamyl acetate, and heptanal for intensity, pleasantness and familiarity. While doing so the subjects wore a nose mask equipped with an airflow sensor that measured sniffs.

Rouby’s team found that good visual and olfactory imagery go hand in hand. They also found that good olfactory imagers rate smells as more intense, familiar and edible than do poor olfactory imagers. They also sniff longer at all odors, regardless of the pleasantness of the odors. 

To the French team these results support “the hypothesis of deeper or more complete odor processing and better access to odor semantics in good olfactory imagers.” That’s a more precise and graceful way of saying that good olfactory imagers are “more tuned into odors.” 

Rouby’s results are further confirmation of the tight reciprocal links between sniffing behavior and the experience of real and imagined odors. People routinely sniff when asked to imagine a particular smell; in doing so, they activate an entire sensorimotor sequence that enhances the vividness of the imagined odor, just as eye movements during visual imagery help us “see” a specific picture in our mind.

All in all, what emerges from the new sensory neuroscience of smell is a view of odor perception as cognitive and motoric—hardly the all-emotion all-the-time caricature that used to prevail.

Calling an Audible: Another First Nerve Literary Classic

In our send off to the recently departed J.D. Salinger, we waxed nostalgic about the classic audible-in-the-chapel scene from Catcher in the Rye. Responding in the comments, reader Ed C. pointed us to the 1972 football novel Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins which he suggested contained much cruder and funnier fart scenes.

Cruder AND funnier? You don’t have to call us twice for dinner. We checked out a stained and mildewed first edition from the town library and inhaled it in one sitting. Nothing better than a football novel on the empty Sunday between the conference championships and the Super Bowl. (OK, technically not empty, but we’re just not that into the Pro Bowl.)

Semi-Tough is the biography of New York Giants star running back Billy Clyde Puckett as spoken by him into a tape recorder off-and-on in the days leading up to a Super Bowl matchup with the “dog-ass New York Jets.” Puckett’s good ol’ boy story-telling style gives us professional football in the locker room, on the field, and on the road. Between the nonstop carousing and sexual hijinx Puckett manages to deliver a believable love story as well.

The book is, as Ed C. cautioned, profane and vulgar in the extreme with liberal use of racial epithets. It’s also funny as hell, with ongoing flatulent outbursts from a Giants player named T.J. Lambert. He’s introduced in an early scene where Puckett’s roommate and lifelong friend Marvin “Shake” Tiller makes a locker room speech.

“Shake stood up on a bench in the dressing room and said, “I think we got some shit we need to talk about, man to man.”

I recall that Puddin Patterson from Grambling, our best offensive guard, was flopped out on the floor picking at his toenails, and when Shake said that, Puddin belched real loud.

“Puddin’s with me,” Shake said. “Anybody else?”

Nobody said anything, but T.J. Lambert, our big old defensive end from Tennessee, hiked his leg and made a noise like a watermelon being dropped on concrete out of a four-story building.

When everybody stopped laughing, Shake got into his talk.

I wouldn’t say that T.J. Lambert’s talent for farting-on-demand is pivotal to the plot, but it does lend the novel a certain air of comic authority. (C’mon, ladies, it’s funny! . . . OK, OK, so it’s a guy thing.)

You could do worse than skip the pre-game show next Sunday and settle into the La-Z-Boy with Semi-Tough and a bowl of bean dip.