What did you think of the smells? I think they could be improved and without the visual aid of the elephant body having the smell object printed all of it lol, I’m not sure if I would have got all of them.
Magical kingdom currently has an elephants statues that project smells as part of a matching game (in Storybook Circus) called Smellephants on parade! You get a sticker for getting them all correct.
The odor limonene feeding into a neural network to predict the odor.
Can we predict what a molecule smells like from its structure? A new exchange in @ChemSenses debates this question. 🧪 @kingfunk.bsky.social
Howdy Y'all,
I'm running a sensory lab now 👀 The lab focuses on smells (duh), textures (🤔), and their interactions using big data approaches to relate the physical to the perceptual.
Lab manager posting linked here. Interested in a PhD? Just message me!
Call for chapter proposals - The OUP Handbook of Smell edited by Jessica Freiherr, Andreas Keller, Kathrin Ohla, Laiquan Zou, & Benjamin Young and published by Oxford University Press (under contract).
Full details here: philevents.org/event/show/1...
Please share widely.
i love data, me too meme
The research group “Sensory Dynamics and Behaviour” of Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels at the Institute of Experimental Epilepsy and Cognition Research at the University Hospital Bonn invites applications for a position as: Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d) The position is initially limited to three years (TV-L E13/100%), starting from April 2026 or as soon as possible.
Postdoc position in systems neuroscience!
Excited to recruit a postdoc for my lab at the University of Bonn.
🔬 In vivo physiology (Neuropixels, 2P/miniscope)
🐭 Head-fixed & freely moving behaviour
💡 Optogenetics/chemogenetics
⏳ Start: ASAP | Application deadline: 28.02.2026
More info below ⬇️
🚨Scientists 🚨: Tired of come-ons from journals & conferences that may or may not be predatory? A new tool called Aletheia-Probe could help. 🧪 By @silverjacket.bsky.social @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
High-Fidelity Tuning of Olfactory Mixture Distances in the Perceptual Space of Smell Through a Community Effort www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12...
And the latest from @dreamchallenges.bsky.social
These bags are already in the wild and underpins recent preprints showing strong perceptual validity:
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Bottom line: jars leak information, bags keep it airtight. #bagboi #bagsrule
2/3 We’ve built and tested an odor sampling bag system with:
- Known concentrations
- Closed headspace
- Air as the carrier (no solvent confounds)
In head-to-head tests, bags produced more reliable results than jars and preserved odorant-specific differences.
1/3 The humble glass jar is a workhorse in olfactory research, but comes w/ hidden problems:
- Unknown headspace concentration
- Concentration dilution by ambient air
These add noise to odor measurements.
Our preprint introduces something new, something bag.🧪 @jmainland.bsky.social & Matt Andres
Superior cf what? Full of ultraprocessed constituents.
The relentless and inappropriate marketing of David protein bars
Here's a roundup of facts about protein intake and unnecessary preoccupation erictopol.substack.com/p/our-preocc...
We are only studying perception in this study with modeling informed by past molecular studies that have shown wide-spread inhibition for odor mixtures. One version of that inhibition is competitive binding as you refer to. See this paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31000595/
This isn’t just theory!
These models can replace slow, expensive “omission tests” in flavor chemistry to find the handful of molecules that actually matter in a food’s aroma.
For instance, what molecules really make coffee smell like coffee. ☕
4/5
Using this information, we can predict perceived odor intensity from molecular structure + concentration with high accuracy for both:
• Single molecules (RMSE = 7.1 on a 100 point scale)
• Complex mixtures (RMSE ~ 7.5)
3/5
Using a very cool bag system to tightly control the concentration, we measured:
• 62 molecules, each at ≥7 concentrations
• 260 mixtures (2–10 components)
• >7,000 intensity ratings from trained human panels
2/5
It’s a trick question. At a lower concentration, acetophenone (left molecule, red, smells like urinal cake) is stronger than 2-heptanone (right molecule, green, smells like blue cheese). So concentration ≠ intensity. That’s been a major roadblock for neuroscience and fragrance / food industries
Chemical structure of acetophenone and 2-heptanone
1/5
Odor intensity isn’t just about concentration! We have a new preprint to prove it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
In cahoots with @jmainland.bsky.social, @alexkoulakov.bsky.social, Rick Gerkin, Khristina Samoilova and others not on bluesky. 🧪
Which of these molecules smells stronger?
Hi, I'd like to be added to the feed to post a study:
scholar.google.com/citations?us...
work place: monell.org/robert-pelle...
New preprint!
tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵
w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Sometimes I forget that Todd Rundgren doesn't want to work but just wants to bang on the drum all day.
Distinguishing performance gains from learning when using generative AI
Comment by Lixiang Yan, Samuel Greiff, Jason M. Lodge & Dragan Gašević
go.nature.com/3FJqTq3
Large language models (LLMs) can mirror human thinking in vision and language, but can they smell and taste?
New study with @rbrainengineer.bsky.social show stochastic LLMs rate creative flavor pairings like humans, prioritizing novelty over taste. #AI #creativity #foodscience
ACOG is deeply disappointed by HHS’s move to drop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations in pregnancy. The science is clear: COVID-19 remains dangerous in pregnancy and vaccination protects both patients and newborns. The vaccine is safe and protects families. Read our full statement: buff.ly/OGue7sO
Regular smell and taste testing could aid early detection of impairments that negatively impact health, safety, and quality of life, and could also reveal underlying disease. But how do we get there? This new whitepaper is out today:
One of the few bands I’ve been listening to since the 90s and still putting out great stuff
With a contemporary smartphone, capturing, transmitting, and replicating sounds and visuals is a breeze, yet replicating scents remains elusive. If you want to change this, consider joining the 2025 DREAM Olfaction Challenge at www.synapse.org/Synapse:syn6....
@oldbap.bsky.social
