Making Scents

Out of body experiences..

It has been found that there is an area of the human brain called the Angular Gyrus that, when stimulated, produces out of body experiences. That may come as a disappointment to all those who believe they are caused by other, more exotic powers, but for me there is a much more interesting side. You see the Angular Gyrus is also stimulated by human body odour. Not stale body odour, or BO – but by fresh body odour.

Now it may be incredibly flattering – and conceited - to imagine that my partner has an out of body experience whenever she is in close proximity to me. The truth is, I haven’t actually asked her - for fear of having the wind taken unceremoniously from my sails – but it is a fascinating fact. What is interesting is that I have mentioned this recently in my perfumery courses, and two students – at different times – said that when they smell perfumery ingredients it feels as though the sensation runs up through the top of their heads and hovers just above them, outside their body.

When things like this are going on, it does make you wonder how on earth we are ever going to crack the puzzle of how the nose works. It’s difficult enough to get around all the cognitive processes that surround any human study, but now we have influences in the brain about which we are not even aware.

On a more practical level, the question is – do I throw my deodorant away now and go “naturelle”? Mmmm – maybe not just yet.

Obituary

It is with great regret that I have to announce the death of my good friend Dr Dave Kelly of Cardiff University at the tender age of just 53. An organic chemist of outstanding ability, my contact with Dave centred around the Semiochemical Network over the past 15 years to which he made such a great contribution in so many ways - not only with his extensive knowledge of chemistry but also with his fabulous sense of humour.

The Semiochemical Network looks into chemical signals in vertebrates and Dave was a leading light in keeping us up to date. His passion for pheromones was never far from the surface, as was his rigor for scientific professionalism.

My last posting "The Smell of Money" was about his latest research and I said at the time that I would not reveal his name, but that's all irrelevant now.

If you are listening Dave - thank you for some of the most stimulating debates, the laughs and the beneifit of your knowledge over the years. We will all miss you terribly.

The Smell of Money

Sometimes fragrances can have some very bizarre applications. A friend of mine, Pete – not his real name because I don’t want him approached - who is a renowned organic chemist was approached by HM Customs & Excise. They wanted to know if it was possible to add a fragrance to money in such a way that dogs would be able to tell if a passenger was carrying more than the allowed limit through customs. An interesting problem on several fronts – health and safety, environmental, technical, practical etc.

Pete had to decide which chemical to use. The chemical has to be detected by ions. Most negative ions are explosives and most positive ions are drugs so the challenge was to find a positive ion that wasn’t a narcotic. Dogs are already trained to detect narcotics and you couldn’t risk an overlap.

Customs and Excise gave Pete the figures on the number of notes in circulation and the average life of a note. He already knew the approximate level of odour necessary for a dog to reliably detect it and this gave a tonnage of the chosen chemical per annum. He considered that one metric tonne would be sufficient and from an environmental point of view he would have to be sure that this level of odour released into the atmosphere every year was acceptable.

Money is something that comes into skin contact with everyone so whatever the chemical used, it would have to be safe. An interesting (but irrelevant) statistic that emerged was that 95% of all US paper money contains traces of cocaine! From a technical point of view, the odour release would of course need to be very cosistent over the life of the note so that a set level of odour always represented a set level of money.

Once the chemical had been chosen (which is confidential at this stage) the next step was to look at the delivery system. He planned to use chemical tube-like structures embedded in the cotton (yes, money is not made from paper, it’s made from cotton fibre and linen rag), then the fragrance could be embedded inside these tubes. If the tubes ran in parallel lines across the note, and the odour could only escape from the end, then the note would only smell on the edge. This would mean that the amount of odour emanating from a wad of cash would be in proportion the amount of money. If the odour came off the face of the note, a wad of notes would smell as strong as a single note.

The project is underway at the moment and if successful will result in dogs effectively being able to count money! Oh, and the amount you’re allowed to carry? I think it’s €10,000.

Floods...

Floods? We never heard of them before July 21^st. It rained solidly for 2 days – not flash flooding, just heavy continuous rain. All the same, I thought we’d got away with it and when I saw the shop on the Saturday morning it was dry – apart from a small puddle of water on the floor. Mind you, the village was flooded and the water outside in the street was about an inch from the door. The puddle, I assumed, was splashed in through the door by passing traffic – I was wrong – it was rising up through the parquet floor from the pressure of a rising water table, and the more we mopped up the puddle the more the water came through.

Fortunately our site is on a slope, it only affected the front part of the shop, and here it only rose to about ¼”. Even so, that’s enough to wreck a wooden floor so we will be closing in January for a few weeks while the floor is replaced.

Many others in the village came off far worse. It was quite a sight to experience - some streets with so much fast flowing water that you couldn’t walk across them without your feet being taken from under you. But being well up river the problem was short lived and within 4 hours the water table had dropped and by the evening you would never know that anything had happened – until you looked inside the houses!