Improbable Taste and Smell Celebration in Philadelphia, on November 12

At the Monell Chemical Senses Center’s “Celebration of Science”, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, on Thursday, November 12, 2025, Marc Abrahams will do an evening talk about improbable research involving taste and smell. The entire day is a celebration of research on those subjects, and especially a celebration of research done by Robert Margolskee and colleagues over […]

Nest persistence, Not your way, Gun theory, Smell, Says-it-all

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Nest: still abandoned — Brace yourselves. That abandoned bird’s nest is still seated in the mouth of the large, ancient, carved stone human face hanging high on a wall in the northernmost corner of the outdoor garden […]

Coffee-Smell-Enhanced Coffee Smell

Coffee smell can be enhanced in reliability and intensity, suggests this study, by adding coffee smell from used coffee: “Improvement of Robusta coffee aroma by modulating flavor precursors in the green coffee bean with enzymatically treated spent coffee grounds: A circular approach,” Cyril Moccand, Aditya Daniel Manchala, Jean-Luc Sauvageat, Anthony Lima, Yvette Fleury Rey, and […]

Improbable Research