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Perfume from the computer
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Written by Gil Yaron |
| Tuesday, 04 August 2009 |
Perfume from the computer
It is our oldest and most primitive sense, but also the least predictable one. While physicists and physiologists can easily explain the way our ears and eyes function, they are at a loss when it comes to our noses. Smells are so difficult to describe that researchers of olfaction face an immense challenge simply to find a standardize language to describe their object of interest. Quantifiable objective measurements of smells do not exist. There is a clear correlation between the wavelength of light and its color or the frequency of a sound and its pitch. No one knows, however, why a foul egg stinks or a rose smells so nice. So far, no link has been discovered between the molecular structure of a substance and its smell. The mechanism by which we perceive and interpret smell has therefore remained one of the largest mysteries of the human body. A team at Israel's Weizmann Institute now claims to have solved the mystery. Using a mathematical model, they have succeeded in predicting the smell of newly created substances, a first in the history of olfactory research.
© 2008 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable
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Out of Africa
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Written by Gil Yaron |
| Saturday, 01 August 2009 |
Have you ever forgotten a cucumber in your fridge only to discover an unidentifiable object in the bottom drawer weeks later? You probably never thought that this mess might some day help scientists gain important insights into our daily lives. But in fact, the prestigious journal “Science” has now published a report by seven Israeli scientists who have been sifting through an ancient “fridge,” of sorts - an archeological dig at Gesher Bnot Yaacov (GBY), next to the Jordan River in northern Galilee. In their publication they claim to have found the oldest hearth outside Africa. The ancient leftovers all around the site may offer clues to our ancestors' lives.
© 2008 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable
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