Smell - Science topic

Hi, I need to prepare 3M sodium acetate solution(pH 7.0) with anhydrous sodium acetate and glacial acetic acid(>99%).

I calculated the amount of sodium acetate, but I'm not sure how much acetic acid is needed.

Can I use acetic acid diluted? I think I have to use acetic acid in hood because of its danger and smell, but pH calibrator is not in hood, so I'm thinking to dilute acetic acid in DW at hood and then come back to pH calibrator and use it when adjusting pH of sodium acetate solution. If it's possible, do you know how much I should dilute it?

technical debts described as choices that done for fast initial gains but are counterproductive in long term. while code smell defined as signs of weak designs and coding.

i am just confused with the difference. is that the reason, time it took to solve or anything else? please help!!

We inherited an old incubator and it showed mould growth in the water tray, so we used an internal service for formalin fumigation (and formalin deactivation with ammonia). They did everything to the book and fumigated the incubator. We proceeded to wipe the residue from the incubator and to run it, cleaning the water tray. There was a smell afterwards, that fainted and then disappeared, and I tested the incubator with cells in a flask that did not seem to be affected anymore. We proceeded to use the incubator, but later (about 1.5 months) realized that cells growing in plates showed increased cell death in that incubator compared to control cells in a control incubator - no contamination present, just cell death. We believe the filter caps protect cells in flasks from being affected. Does anyone have experience with this issue and know what to do to get rid of it? Our current approach is to wipe it again thoroughly.

Follow up: After a second thorough wipe, cell growing in plates survived in the incubator but grew more slowly than in the non-fumigated incubator. Before we could do the third rinse, the incubator grew mould again at the bottom, indicating that spores may have survived the formalin fumigation somewhere within the inaccessible areas of the incubator. We have now discarded the use of this old incubator for tissue culture.

a veterinary oral solution containing vitamins and amino acids including Cysteine , it started smelling like rotten eggs. So my question is what is the reaction that might cause H2S to be released ? and may the presence of a feed grade amino acid have an effect on cysteine and cause the release of the previously mentioned gas?

Is there a cheap way to measure the intensity of smells coming from a urban landfill?

I just put my pyridine contaminated, water rinsed glassware in the cabinet and now whenever I open the cabinet a fume of pyridine welcomes me each time despite of removing every source. P.s. I have kept the cabinet open for days but all in vain.

Hi everyone, I would like to understand if there is a way to form heptyl acetate and heptyl heptanoate without the use of a reflux system (using only traditional glassware), and using a sulfuric acid catalyst. so far using the volume of 1.54ml heptanol, 7.44ml of heptanoic acid, and 3ml of acetic acid is not working. The heptanol smell is very much present.

There are cases of complete absence of smell, hearing or vision at birth, but none of total bilateral absence of vestibular function. What about taste? It seems so rare it is doubtful if it genuinely exists.

Hello All,

I have been noticing that my cells haven't had the greatest viability. Typically when I passage my cells I see upper 90% in terms of viability and only see a drop in viability 3 days after I have reached terminal volume. However, recently I have seen lower viability when I passage around upper/mid 80% and then seemingly at random my cells viability drops into low 60% with very little cell density ~1e6. My first thought is contamination so I do the smell test and don't smell any sense of yeast. I check under the microscope at 4X, 10X, 20X and I don't see anything out of ordinary also checking with GFP lens and see that the cells that are clumped together are still showing green color. I check the images that are taken by the vi-cell and don't see anything out of ordinary. I have also been checking the culture visually and don't see anything that catches my eye. What else can I do to figure out what is happening with my cells?

hi,

I am trying to run the JDeodorant bad smell detection plug in in Eclipse , but there is alot of errors and I am not able to get the reports.

Any help please?

Dear all,

i am searching for a list of inorganic substances with a smell but i haven't find one.

Currently, I found only four substances:

H2S

NH3

NO2

Na2SnO3.

best regards

Luca

I ordered three scents for scent lures for bees: vanillin, eugenol, and methyl salicylate. Vanillin came as a powder, the other two as liquid. What should I dissolve the vanillin in? Literature only says "alcohol". Isopropyl doesn't seem right, it has too strong a smell of its own. Help??

Subj. We have two cylinders connected to our incubators. If I disconnect the line from each cylinder and smell it, one is at least ten-fold more acidic than the other (essentially, it's impossible to smell one without turning away, while the other only has a hint of acid smell). I suspect one of the cylinders was somehow contaminated with water which then reacted with CO2 to form acid. However, the media stays red regardless. Does anyone have experience with this? Can acid contamination affect cells?

Dear researchers,

I am currently using ethyl acetate as an extraction solvent during the workup of my lipase-catalyzed reaction. In this DSP: ethyl acetate is used first, for liquid-solid extraction then for a liquid-liquid one (in which the organic phase=EtAc is being washed from the unreacted water-soluble substrate). Thereafter the organic phase is chemically dried over MgSO4 and evaporated (rotary evaporator), the dry residue is my end product (sugar ester).

One of my goal is to continuously recover and re-use the ethyl acetate, however, I could not miss that over the cycles/batches, a strong smell of acetic acid emanates from my solvent canister and if I dry evaporate the pure, used, solvent a liquid residue remains with a smell that cannot be confused... acetic acid.

Is there a way to conserve the integrity of my ethyl acetate? Or find a way to adsorb/segregate the acetic acid at least?

My lipase is but shortly in contact with the ethyl acetate, it is an immobilized formulation that is filtered off at the end of the process.

I would be very thankful for any input ideas/recommendations.

André Delavault

Plain carbon steel with less than 0.5 percent carbon, when cut with a ceramic cutting disc, not only emits small sparks of metallic particles that are oxidized to incandescent glow, but also leaves a peculiar smell. What is source of the smell? The smell is not entirely metallic, as far as I can sense.

The smell from metallic objects like copper pennies and steel rods that come in contact to our skin is often souced from inorganic or organo-phosphate compounds found on surface of the metals, or at least, result of accelerated catalytic breakdown of some skin carbonyl compounds. But what caused the smell from steel cutting that is not contact with skin?

My guesses are

1. Sourced from trace amount of P and S (<0.05%) present in steel particles that are oxidized.

2. Nanoparticular suspension of iron oxide in air that comes to nose as disrupt olfactory sensation

3. Formation of volatile iron compounds like iron pentacarbonyl during this cutting and oxidation process, while that still-incandescent sparks come in contact in organic compounds.

Dear Researcher,

As part of our research, we monitor patients' various symptoms in order to detect new variants of the Coronavirus by analyzing the COVID-19 data.

We need to include a new symptoms dataset. Unfortunately, we do not have access to any decent data.

It would be great if you could provide us patients' datasets of your paper, including their gender, age, location, date, and more importantly, their symptoms like fever, fatigue, cough, and loss of smell and taste.

There are some researches such as (App-Based Tracking of Self-Reported COVID-19 Symptoms: Analysis of Questionnaire Data) in the literature. But I do not know of the availability of their dataset.

Do you have any suggestions?

Best,

Mahdi Fathi

I know 2 women who have lost their senses of taste and smell after being diagnosed with COVID-19, but have not met a male with this symptom. Is there research on recovery and gender?

There is sweepage of the white fussy outcome of liquid with foul smell and destroying plant completely it is in the particular plant since few days, what is this and how it can be controlled?

As insects become more resistant to pesticides, the “smell of fear” some predators produce may someday be harnessed to repel and disrupt destructive insects naturally. In a recent study, a team of researchers found that the synthesized scent of a ladybug had measurable effects on their natural prey aphids in the lab, and the next step will be field tests. Plant-eating bugs pose threats to farmers and gardeners, prompting the use of pesticides. In the study led by Hermann, predator insects emit odors that their herbivorous prey can detect. This, in turn, changes pests’ behavior and even their physiology to avoid being eaten. The researchers have found a way to capture the “smell of fear” to obviate the need for harsh chemicals.

Farmers are known to use massive amounts of pesticides to get rid of the hordes of hungry insects that are destroying their crops because herbivores are a major threat to crop yields. These pesticides often cause massive environmental problems. They can reach our food, harm humans, threaten bees, kill birds, and destroy populations of predatory insects as well, making the crop pest problem worse in the long run. So one alternative that researchers and farmers have been testing is to use predatory insects to control plant-eaters. However, this approach - known as biological control - has its own challenges, as the release of many natural predators may not always target the intended species, in addition to the fact that some pests are invasive and have no native predators, and may even prey on each other in the end.

So, what is your scientific opinion on harnessing the natural smell of predators as a promising future direction of chemical ecology applied in sustainable pest control?

All comments and contributions are welcome.

I'm confused with the measurement of odor intensity introduced in VDI 3882 Part-1. Should dilution series be presented? Could the panellist just smell the undiluted sample and classify the odor impression with number 0~6? And what does "the series of measurements shall be repeated (at least twice; 3 runs)" mean?

Some Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infected persons develop mild to severe hematological, neurological, hepatic, respiratory, and psychological complications

these complications such as headache, photophobia, diplopia, episodes of epistaxis as well as elevated liver function tests and hyponatremia in addition to paresthesia, myalgias, tinnitus, ear fullness, impaired-hearing, about 70% reduction in smell and taste, dysosmia, dysgeusia, phantosmia, and phantoguesia as well.

my question is, why all symptoms caused by EBV have been correlated or linked to COVID-19 ?

Kindly assist to identify these two pathogens isolated from avocado and African cherry leaves respectively and cultured on Malt Extract Agar. It is slimy and has a very strong smell.

There has been increasing literature on people losing their sense of taste and smell due to a COVID-19 infection. Do any of you neurologists have opinions on why people with COVID get these symptoms and how long it would take to recover post-COVID?

When extracting RNA from animal tissues, because of its bad smell, what would be the alternative of β-Mercaptoethanol to inhibit endogenous rnases?

e.g. smell, touch feedback, temperature, audio, ..

What's the criteria of comolete lysis of E.coli when breaking them using ultrasonic? What phenomena can help to determine if the cell are broken completely? From smell, transparence of the lysis or SDS-PAGE of the cell pellet and solution?

My mom (55 y.o.) has been sick with covid-19 for 10 days.

She had very mild fever(37.2degC) for the first 2 days. She took Nimesil just in case it keeps increasing. Then for the next 7 days she didn’t have any fever and she didn’t took any medicine, but she was having extreme fatigue. She has been feeling very unwell and we can’t figure out what exactly is wrong: she doesn’t have any pain, she has no difficulty breathing, her saturation is around 97%, she had no cough or anything, she didn’t loose her sense of smell/taste. But very often she would have her body temperature going down to 35.8-36.0.

And now, after 9-10 days, all of a sudden, she has fever with 38degC and she still has extreme fatigue, can someone explain what’s going on? Is it normal?

Dear colleagues, I have troubles with three flasks of MDA MB 436. As you can see from the pictures, they look like contaminated, but apparently the medium isn't cloudy and the dots (which I supposed could have been bacteria) aren't floating, but stay still on the bottom of the flasks. Moreover, I cannot perceive the typical bad smell that contaminated flasks usually spread inside the incubator or when you open the cap.

Does anybody have experience of this type of contamination?

Thank you in advance for your help!

I have been trying to express a protein using E. Coli strains (Rosetta and BL21) and am using LB and TB media. But both cultures have a very sharp acidic smell. I have tried for two weeks to express my protein but after centrifuge the cell pellet is very honey-like and no protein is expressed on SDS-PAGE!! I have tried plating and there are very nice single colonies.

Can anyone help me in finding the reason?

The five widely known basic organs and senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell; They are in charge of making us see, hear, smell, taste and have tactile sensitivity. Each organ is associated with a sense:

The eyes are associated with the sense of sight (vision).

The ears are associated with the sense of hearing (hearing).

The nose is associated with the sense of smell.

The tongue is associated with the sense of taste.

The skin is associated with the sense of touch.

I am trying to make a 3 M potassium glycinate solution using equimolar amounts of KOH and glycine. However, my pH ends up too high (~13) and the solution smells of ammonia, indicating that the glycine is hydrolysing or degrading? A huge amount of citric acid is needed to even drop the pH slightly, and the ammonia smell does not seem to go away.

What could be the problem?

Let me begin by stating that statistics are unfortunately no strength of mine.

I have conducted a questionnaire assessing loss of smell/taste in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic for my MSc thesis. I have surveyed 254 HCWs of which 44 reported loss of their smell and taste. The first question asked whether the participant had experienced a loss of smell or taste within the last 6 months (yes/no). The next question enquired whether the participant had experienced a burning or tingling sensation within the 6 months (yes/no).

I would subsequently like to compare the results of these two questions in order to establish if participants who reported a loss of smell and taste were statistically more likely to experience a burning and tingling sensation than those who did not report a loss of smell or taste.

I have already run a Chi-square test using spss however my assumptions have been violated so I want to ensure I am using the correct statistical test.

Any suggestions/guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

The river is classified as a category V contaminated river. Teacher claim that the bad smell often after and during raining.

Hi everyone, You answers provide me a lots of help in my research work. Today I have a question, in which I need your help. Please provide me your valuable answer. My question is that, "what is a most effective wavelength for smelling sensor??" In my one research work, My UV-Vis result, found a constant absorbance between 300nm to 800nm wavelength, So It is good symbol or not?

Please provide me your valuable answer...

Thank you everyone.

The anchovy is mostly intended for the production of fishmeal, because its taste and smell are not very pleasant before the taste of people, thus wasting the great nutritional value of the anchovy.

Are sudden absence of sense of smell and taste mean Covid-19 infections in the absence of other symptoms?

We are currently using isopropanol to disinfect everything in cell culture and as the amount of cells has increased the amount of used is being too much - to the point where anyone going in will cough and eyes water.

Is there an effective alternative that doesn't smell as strongly?

Well, I think that animals and us (animals too) are both intelligent and rational, we just evolved, back in time we were "dumb" as we think animals are but who thinks this way is wrong, you don't see animals throwing themselves from edges, when a dog goes to a precipice they don't jump to death, they have the ability to rationalize situations, dogs can cross streets, help blind humans to walk through cities and even find cancer presence only by smell, and many other things that we can't. In fact, what I think that differs us from them is the dexterity achieved by humankind, the know-how acquired by us is on another level, we were able to think, to question and to answer that questions, what really differs us is our philosophy and science, our mind and brain evolved too much and got the capacity of creation.

Interesting discussion on giving care to children! Does GDP/economic growth mean everything to a country? When we blindly pursue this target what are the negative by-products we get? Until very recently, we were targetting cognitive skills development of our children. But now the focus has started to shift to whole-person/holistic/ whole-brain-child development. Similarly, it is not just the GDP figure that matters but developing sustainable societies. "However 39 per cent of the women who reported childcare as the main barrier to work also confessed that they actually preferred to look after their children. Shock, horror." "The child is hardwired to its mother's smell, and the sound of her voice. The mother becomes responsive to her infant's face, its vocalisations and its touch. Because a child needs to be attached to someone to survive, evolution has led it to be programmed from before birth to attach to a caregiver as soon as it hits the deck. But this evolutionary necessity does not suit the modern world. It does not suit the neo-liberal world view of economic growth as the key driver of all actions and public policy."

Steam distilling is great, but in this case it is leaving an off putting smell and taste in the desired end product. Are there any other methods to distill the volatile oils without direct solvent extraction of the plant? We do not want to use solvent directly on the plant because it will pick up other compounds that we cannot have in our end product.

Does anyone have any idea about how the E.ludwigii L.B broth culture smell so badly?

Psychopaths is said to have a weaker sense of smell, but I wonder what the biological reason for that is. I've read a few articles and researches, but can't seem to find an extensive research regarding the theory. 

Since the smell of cigarettes is annoying and harmful to many people, is there a catch or a way to remove or absorb the cigarettes smell?

I'm working on the aesthetic value associated with smell and the representation of it in literature. So any recommendations for the books or articles to be looked upon?

In relation with 3 aspects:-

1) unblocking of sewers

2) eliminating fool smell

3)degradation of plastic waste and other waster material.

Hello, please, I would like to know if the meat freshly put in a freezer of the kitchen, is able to undergo a putrefaction (blue color and smell of relent) in just 2 to 3 days after? !!! because this is a case that I have just found personally and I really do not have any explanation for it and even veterinarians do not know why ..., is this putrefaction due to an action of bacteria or enzymes that work at low temperatures from -10 to -17 C?! The animal sacrificed (sheep), was it doped with hormones or other substances before its death to cause this putrefaction? Thank you

We are making a recombinant protein in Pichia and want to know if there is any way to remove the smelly feet?

We've tried bicarbonate buffers and rinsing with 20% Ethanol.

Is there any chemical that will react with, what we assume is Butanoic Acid?

Thank you in advance,

Thousands of people die every year in hospitals due to the infected hospital floors and textile- and plastic fabrics.

In the 1950s-1970s Lysol was used that was highly disinfectant. In spite of the newer brands, Lysol is still the best and cleans everything. The smell of Lysol is pugnant, but I think that its disinfection product is better to humanity in spite of that well-known smell.

Like some syrups, can tablets and capsules be flavor coated? Especially for children and adults who can't take regular tablets or capsules. Are there any side effects for flavor-coating a tablet or capsule? Besides masking taste of the medicine, can the smell of medicine be masked?

Hello, we have a dry oven and a electric furnace. While students were using those equipments, they put a Kimtech wiper in it. Since the temperature was over 150 degrees celsius, the wiper melted and burned. The problem is, the burned Kimtech sticked to the floor of equipments. We tried cleaning with ethanol and acetone but it didn't work. We left remaining burns, but as temperature goes up around 200 degrees celsius, bad harmful smell comes out.

Is there any advice to clean those burns up?

An unfermented green layer of forage is seen at the middle parts after 6 months. It is cold, does not smell bad and pH is only silghtly higher than fermented parts. Toxin profile is safe, but intake potential severly lower.

I am using a mortar and pestle to extract RNA. I usually grind the tissue in liquid nitrogen, add TRIzol to the mortar and then transfer it to a microtube. After the extraction, I let the mortars and pestles soaked in water with bleach and detergent. After some days I washed it with distilled water and put it in the oven to dry. Now the whole Lab is smelling TRIzol. I am afraid I let it soak for to long and the TRIzol got stuck to the mortar. What can I do?

Odor can be measured with the help of field olfactometer in terms of OU/m3. But the toxicity level or the presence of pollutants has nothing to do with the odor in most of the cases, except the gaseous pollutants with an obnoxious smell and vice versa. Despite the real fact, as per human psychology, we presume if there is an odor there must be toxication of the ambient air which is completely illogical. Please share your views on it and what's the local believe in your area/ country. Also, inform others about it to avoid the myth.

I was running western blot. I had an issue. When I used 2x sample lamelli buffer which smells really strong, the protein dimerizes and shows multiple bands at 50, 75 and 100kDA.

On contrary, when I used 4x sample buffer sample buffer, I could see a clean band at 160kDA.

I have question whether the sample lamelli 2x or 4x buffer makes any difference to the bands?

All other protocol is same.

The protein of interest predicts at 25kDA as per company data sheet.

Can you plz let me know what could be issue. I prepared 4x sample buffer fresh and started the experiment all over, I get clean bands. The only ambiguity is 2x sample buffer which makes my protein dimerize and show multiple bands.

I understand that external factors like smell and colour of a room can affect the mood or performance of a person. But to what level is the effect ? Is there any quantitative measure of its influence.

Has anyone did a real life testing ?

Thank you

Reclaimed / re-refined used engine oil gives off a very bitter smell ! If the oil is treated with base the smell gets worse, treatment with acids produces a different bad odour albeit a little sweet !

What causes this ? Are there and solutions for this ?

I'm studying about recombinant protein production now. When producing recombinant protein in large scale using E. coli, there are several problems including endotoxin and bad smell etc. I want to know how to solve these problems. Thank you.

I've used hexane to extract the oil from fish silage. Currently, I'm having fish oil mixed with hexane. There is a strong smell of hexane in the oil. 

What is the best method to recover the oil from the solvent mixture (n-hexane)? 

Is it possible to recover the oil by using anhydrous sodium sulphate?

I'm glad if anyone could help me in this?

I'm researching nitrogenous compounds in essential oils, like indole, and notice that serotonin is also an indole... wondering what the smell is like, if anyone has ever had any in a laboratory?

I'm writing a paper about olfactive trademark (smell trademark) in the world. Certain countries accepted to protect smell as trademark but it's too difficult to do that.

If you found great paper on this topic, please can you give me the references?

Caroline A

We are looking to a good sniffin' test to evaluate smell discrimination and detection. It will be a sample of 40 participants.

We live in a touristic area with sustainable energy production, e.g. biogas. Terrible smells are rather annoying. So my question: Are there solutions by molecular biology or bionics?

Whether you call it farting, flatulence, passing gas, passing wind, pooting or ____ (you may suggest some terms) there is a cultural norm in the U.S. that it should not be done in public. Well in middle school the norm is to 'let it rip' as loudly as you can, but most of the rest of people in the U.S. try to avoid passing them or release them quietly (hoping the smell is either not present or someone else gets the blame). So that leads to the question - how do people in your culture (region, country, ethnic group) view or accept the act of farting?

- Is it accepted as a normal body function, or a cause of embarrassment?

- Does this change if it is malodorous?

- Does the age of the the person releasing the gas alter the perception of social propriety?

- Are there social situations where passing wind is accepted but other situations where it is not socially correct?

- What about the terms? When I first used the term in South Carolina after moving from the Great Lakes area, my new wife told me farting was not a nice word and I should use pooting.

- Is it normal to apologize if you fart? Is ignoring it always done? Or do you comment on the type of food that may have caused it?

- Are there jokes in your culture about the people who fart or the farting itself?

Well I hope you have some fun thinking about this and explaining your cultural view of this body function.

I'm studying about recombinant protein production now. When producing recombinant protein in large scale using E. coli, there are several problems including endotoxin and bad smell etc. I want to know how to solve these problems. Thank you.

We know that Cell phone industry is becoming another cigarette industry, which kept claiming that smoking is not harmful and now there are millions of people around the world who have suffered from smoking. In fact, cell phone/tower radiation is worse than smoking; as one cannot see it or smell it, and its effect on health is noted after a long period of exposure.

For dispersal from one waterbody to another or perhaps even from one catchment to another, aquatic insects follow the stream and/or suppose to use the polarization visibility of the watersurface. But is it also possible that insects can smell water? I discussed this with a colleague just today during a lecture on dispersal of aquatic insects from one waterbody to another. Is it possible that adult insects move to another waterbody/stream over land using their smell to find water?

A biobased solution was prepared to be used as fertilizer. Agriculture and animal wastes are the source of the prepared solution. It has a promising behaviour in some plants growth. The main problem is the very bad smell of the solution. Could anyone help suggesting any additives could be added to get red of the bad smell without affecting the solution effectiveness?

Thanks in advance.

During induction of general anaesthesia, is there any established sequence of onset of disabilities like vision, hearing, smell, taste, temperature, sensory, motor, and so on? Do they have any sequence of regaining as well during recovery?

Hello,

there are some articles about the chemical nature of the characteristic "odor of rain" when rain begins to fall.

Always some chemicals in the soil or surface coming from plants are mentioned as the reason.

I was on a ship crossing the atlantic. 1000 km away from any coast it started raining. And I immediately smelled the typical odor of rain (it was a polymer covered floor).

Has anybody deeper knowledge??

Regards

Lothar

I'm producing value added products from sea cucumbers. The major problem I'm facing is the peculiar odor that can't be accepted sometimes. If anyone applied any methods to remove bad odor from any type of meat please try to help me. I can make trails for my case.

I think my proteins on the PVDF membrane are gone, because there is nothing to detect anymore.

But on the other hand the membranes smell after a lot of washing procedures still of 2-ME. Maybe my proteins are there and the antibodies cannot work because of 2-ME traces?

What do you think about that?

If there is no protein anymore I have to repeat the experiment but if they are there and it is only the antibody problem how can I get rid of the 2-ME?

The Ponceau staining shows no results except of proteins >150kDa, but Ponceau on PVDF is never good.

I am a bit desperate to be honest.

Would be great if anybody has faced such a mistake. I cannot find anything about it in the internet...

Thanks in advance, Anja

I am using 2-mercaptoethanol and it smells bad. Is there a way to decrease the smell of the solution after adding mercaptoethanol?

Most teachers do not seem to care soo much about what they put on or how they smell even though they are public figures that people come close to and students also look up to them as their role models. once the quality of a teacher is largely measured by the performance of his or her students. does his or her outlook have an effect on students learning.

The mixture did not surpass 69C while processing but increased to 93C after sitting in a sealed container for 3 hours. This resulted in 'hardening' of the mixture as well as a burnt smell. These temperatures are no where close to the required temperature for self-polymerization in epoxies.