Do you smell that?

I have a good nose for scents.

I think it’s something I inherited from my mother, a woman who can sniff out mysterious odors like a bloodhound.  When I was growing up it was not uncommon for her to freeze mid-conversation, tilt her head back, and ask, with voice hushed and nostrils flared, “Do you smell that?” My sister and I never could, but we liked to tiptoe behind her on the hunt.  She’d prowl from room to room, wafting air to nose silently, as if the offending odor was an animal we had to be careful not to spook.

Of the entire household, my father had the worst sense of smell.  Whereas my mother could pinpoint the precise location of an errant sliver of orange peel from two rooms away, Dad was better at detecting more distinct aromas.  He was able to determine, for instance, when the cat left a puddle on his side of the bedspread (the visual clue may have helped).

Since then, my sense of smell has matured, and I’ve noticed the gender-specific olfactory divide in my own marriage.  This difference between male and female noses seems especially apparent when it comes to food: leftovers in particular.

Summer Salads

Salads scare me.

Don’t get me wrong: I love vegetables, I have a garden, I don’t eat meat; but until recently, given the choice between preparing a salad for dinner and… pretty much anything else, I would have chosen anything else.

I’m stymied by dressings, confounded by croutons, and despite my best creative efforts, always seem to rely on the same old salad staples.  Lettuce and tomatoes and carrots, oh my.

The idea of salads, however, has always been enticing: healthy, fresh, simple, inexpensive. How could a vegetarian resist?   

Gardening in the Community

It’s been a rough few weeks for blog posting- but not for lack of news!  I’ve been busy writing articles for a local newsletter, and I’m afraid I’ve fallen behind on the science front.  But, my first article was published today!  If you’re in Davis, you can pick up a hard copy at the Co-op (or, just read it here!). 

I never intended to start a garden.

The assignment started out straight forward enough: talk to the community gardening coordinators around Davis and report back. Easy. No sweat. Although my appetite for fresh summer vegetables can be all consuming, it’s been years since I actually grew my own.

 Like many apartment-dwelling Davis residents, my gardening prospects are limited by space. Our shady front stoop is just large enough to accommodate a few potted plants; last year my ‘garden’ consisted of a single Sun Gold tomato plant (my sole hope for a summer vegetable crop). After an entire season of being watered, tended, nurtured, and loved, it bore exactly two golden-orange cherry tomatoes. They were delicious.

 I learned the hard way that whispered encouragements and adoring gazes don’t take the place of adequate sunshine and growing space. I’ve accepted the fact that my tomato-growing plans and budding green thumb will have to wait until I can stake out a sunny patch of land of my own. So in the meantime I’m saving my seeds.

Is It Too Late To Change My Thesis Project?

Prior to this weekend, I would have been slightly embarrassed to admit that I’m captivated by YouTube videos of dancing animals. There’s something about the combination of bubbly pop music and beat-bouncing pets that is irresistible to watch.

I always thought I was just a sucker for cute animals, but now, thanks to the people at NPR’s Science Friday, I can say it’s all in the name of science.

It’s All in Your Head: Our Brains Know More Than We Think.

What if I told you that you’re being watched?  That every decision you make is under constant observation and judgment.  That every action is catalogued, and every mistake identified… before it even occurs. Sounds creepy, right?  Like some sort of evil Orwellian plot from the future.  But we’re talking about science, not science-fiction, and the future-seeing, decision-judging voyeurs in this story are our own brains.  Lucky for us, they’re on our side.

A Million Here, A Billion There…

I hope I’m the only one who didn’t know about Planet Money.  I was enlightened earlier this week by a podcast savvy labmate, and after listening to last Wednesday’s episode, spent a good part of the afternoon asking people if they knew how long it would take to count to a billion.  (Don’t worry, I’ll tell you soon.)

Let Them Eat Cake: Understanding How our Minds Make Decisions

“I ate a cookie,” my husband confessed.

Normally, that’s not much to feel guilty about: anyone who’s seen us with a pint or two of ice cream knows we’re hardly militant about our sugar intake. But, during Lent my husband and I remember our Catholic roots and attempt to adhere to the ancient tradition of self-sacrifice. As sweets are our main weakness (and often our primary source of calories), every year we travel the well-worn path of optimistic resolutions and try to abstain from eating sugary treats during the 40 days preceding Easter. Sounds pretty easy, right? After all, it’s only a few weeks. Well, if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then ours is also littered with the candy wrappers of years past. This time, however, we had been determined to succeed.

Wordle Science!

Looking for a colorful way to waste some time?  Check out www.wordle.net and paste in some text (or a blog post or two…).  Wordle will find frequently occurring words in the text and create a ‘word cloud’ – a swarming concoction of the words you used most.  You could spend hours playing around with different colors, layouts, and fonts.  Trust  me.

(Do you think any journals would accept a Wordle instead of an abstract?)

Down the Wormhole: My Initiation into the Wormy World of Compost

I have to admit, when my husband first announced that we would be feeding our garbage to worms, I was a bit apprehensive.  When he told me that the worms would live in our house, underneath our kitchen table, I began to fear for his sanity.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s generally a pretty sensible guy, but this is a man who was once wooed by a stray mouse he found loitering on the sidewalk by our house.  (It’s almost three years old now and lives in the kitchen, on a shelf above the washing machine.)

After he discovered that our landlord didn’t allow dogs, he tried to convince me to get a kitten, despite the fact that, for him, the presence of cat hair and the ability to breath are mutually exclusive.  So you’ll understand if I assumed this was the latest in a series of peculiar pet proposals.  A week later, we received two pounds of live redworms in the mail and set off on our wormy adventure.

A Gut Feeling: New Research Explores the Living Inhabitants of Your Intestines

Are you in the market for a healthy, stable, long-term relationship?  Turns out you may not have to look further than your gut.  Or, more specifically, the trillions of microbes that inhabit your gut. Yes, you and a few trillion life-partners are currently involved in a devoted, mutually-beneficial relationship (a trill-some, if you will) that has endured the test of time. Don’t worry though; they’ve already met your mother.

We’re first exposed to our mother’s microbial flora during birth; these are the pioneering settlers of our gastro-intestinal (GI) tract.  In the following weeks our gut becomes fully colonized with a diverse array of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Although our gut microbes are generally about an order of magnitude smaller in size than human cells, when counted by the trillions, they add up.

In fact, these intestinal interlopers (along with their fellow skin, genital and glandular neighbors) can account for up 2% of a person’s total body mass).  That’s right, a 175lb man could be carrying more than 3 pounds of microbes in and on his body. Most of these microbial tenants, however, are crowded together in the lower part of his large intestine: the colon.