Showing posts with label social engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social engineering. Show all posts

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Personal Olfactory Identification Information

 

Two things we will never fully understand, the human body, and olfaction, together.

Researchers explain the dissimilar smells of babies and teenagers
Mar 2024, phys.org

The researchers recruited the parents of 18 children aged up to 3 years old to wash the youngsters with a fragrance-free gel and to take swap samples of the armpits of their pajamas prior to sleep. They did the same with 18 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. All the cotton pads were then collected and analyzed in a lab setting.

The research team used mass spectrometry to identify the chemical compounds in the pads, and used gas chromatography along with a human sniffer to assess the odorousness of the smells associated with each chemical compound.

The researchers found that most of the chemicals responsible for body odor were similar between the two groups of volunteers. But there were a few that made the difference. Teenage sweat, for example, had high levels of many kinds of carboxylic acids, which the assessors described as "earthy, musty or cheesy."

They also found two steroids in the teen sweat not present in the baby sweat, one of which resulted in "musk or urine-like" emanations - the other, the assessors suggested, smelled more like "musk and sandalwood." Without such chemicals, the sweat of babies smelled much sweeter.

via a team of aroma chemists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg with psychologists from Technical University of Dresden: Diana Owsienko et al, Body odor samples from infants and post-pubertal children differ in their volatile profiles, Communications Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s42004-024-01131-4



Clothes are like your second skin, so we can also call this body odor:

Textile scientists offer fresh insights on why some clothes get smellier
Jul 2024, phys.org

Cotton and viscose, which are cellulosic, or plant-derived fibers, absorbed - and consequently released - smaller amounts of odor-causing compounds than polyester, nylon and wool.

"Although we know that polyester is smellier after being worn next to sweaty armpits compared to cotton T-shirts, we haven't really known why."

"If you had a sweaty armpit that never actually touched the shirt you're wearing, then the fabric wouldn't get very smelly." The researchers soaked the fibers in the sweat solution for different periods of time, then examined the release of various odor-causing compounds.

Sweat is mostly made up of water but also has oily compounds that bacteria transform to form odors, and these oily compounds in watery sweat can interact differently with textiles, depending on the fiber chemistry.

"While water-loving cellulosic fibers such as cotton and viscose absorb more of the water from sweat than polyester does, polyester doesn't want to absorb the water. It's more oil-loving, and it absorbs more of the odorants, which don't dissolve in water, and more of the oily compounds.

The research also showed that although nylon and wool initially took in a lot of the odorants from the sweat, they dissipated them more quickly than polyester. After 24 hours, wool and nylon had much lower intensities of the odorants and were more similar to the cellulosic fibers.

"That tells us that while polyester still needs to be washed, for nylon and wool garments, people might be able to freshen them by just airing them out rather than laundering every time."

Bonus:
"The study's method of using simulated liquid sweat also offers an important fresh approach to exploring the issue."

via New University of Alberta and University of Otago in New Zealand: Rachel H McQueen et al, Textile sorption and release of odorous volatile organic compounds from a synthetic sweat solution, Textile Research Journal (2024). DOI: 10.1177/00405175241249462


Does fertility affect a woman's body odor? Study finds no evidence
Jul 2024, phys.org

The researchers took samples of underarm odor from 29 women on 10 days spread over a menstrual cycle. A group of 91 men were then asked to rate the odor samples. In 16 of the women, the research team also looked at whether the chemical composition of the odor samples differed between the women's fertile and infertile days.

The results of both tests pointed in the same direction: there was no evidence from the odor ratings that men found a woman's odor more attractive on her fertile days than on her infertile days. 

Chemical analysis of the odor samples also showed no correlation between the composition of the underarm odor and the women's current fertility status.

via Leipzig University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Göttingen: Madita Zetzsche et al, Combined perceptual and chemical analyses show no compelling evidence for ovulatory cycle shifts in women's axillary odour, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2712


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Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Olfactory Otherness


I have a crazy idea there's a correlation between the rise of anxiety in a population and the decline in body odor due to deodorant and hygiene practices, as well as due to the increased availability of privacy, which is what I'll call the ability for each of us to have our own bedroom when growing up, or to live in an apartment alone as an adult, things that weren't available back in time because of financial constraints. That being said, the studies below do seem to suggest that smell has a stronger effect on our emotional states and our mental health status then we are aware of. 


Research shows that sniffing women's tears reduces aggressive behavior in men
Dec 2023, phys.org

Science strikes again!
  • They use the words "emotional tears" just to clarify. (not all tears are created equal)
  • The men played a two-player game where they were allowed to get revenge on the opponent.
  • Revenge-seeking aggressive behavior during the game dropped more than 40% after the men sniffed women's emotional tears.

via Weizmann Institute of Science: Agron S, de March CA, Weissgross R, Mishor E, Gorodisky L, Weiss T, et al. (2023) A chemical signal in human female tears lowers aggression in males. PLoS Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002442



Scents might help depressed individuals, new study says
Feb 2024, phys.org

Scents are more effective than words at bringing back a memory of a specific event and could even be used in the clinical setting to help depressed individuals get out of the negative thought cycles and rewire thought patterns, aiding faster and smoother healing.

"It was surprising to me that nobody thought to look at memory recall in depressed individuals using odor cues before"

Professor Young presented study participants with a series of opaque glass vials containing potent familiar scents—from oranges and ground coffee to shoe polish, and even Vicks VapoRub. After asking participants to smell the vial, Young asked them to recall a specific memory, whether good or bad.

via University of Pittsburgh: Kymberly Young et al, Recall of Autobiographical Memories Following Odor vs Verbal Cues Among Adults With Major Depressive Disorder, JAMA Network Open (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.55958

 
Study finds social interactions and olfactory cues prompt contagious itch in mice
Jun 2024, phys.org

Contagious itch only occurs in mice when they observe if a mouse that has been in their proximity is scratching.

Anosmic observer mice, whether itch-naïve or itch-experienced, displayed no contagious itch behavior.

via Tehran University of Medical Sciences: Shayan, M. et al. Social interactions and olfactory cues are required for contagious itch in mice. Scientific Reports(2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-61078-3.


Research shows young infants use their mother's scent to perceive faces
Jul 2024, phys.org

We tested 50 infants aged from 4 to 12 months, and found that the face-selective EEG response increases and complexified, indicative of improved face perception with development.

As expected, we also found that the benefit of adding the mother's body odor diminishes with age, confirming an inverse relation between the effectiveness of visual perception and its sensitivity to a concurrent odor.

Overall, this demonstrates that visual perception actively relies on odor cues in developing infants until the visual system becomes effective by itself.

What surprised me the most, not only in these studies but also in the previous studies we conducted, is the fact that the mother's odor has such a strong effect on the perception of various unfamiliar faces ... by showing reduced reactions to fearful faces, higher attention toward an unfamiliar woman, and increased interbrain synchrony between the infant and that woman.

Thus, it seems like the mother's body odor reassures the infant and promotes their interest when they encounter novel people. In other words, this primary social odor that infants learn already in the womb seems to encourage prosocial cognitions and behaviors.

via Society for Research in Child Development, Development of Olfactory Communication & Cognition  Lab in the Center for Taste, Smell and Feeding Sciences at Université de Bourgogne, University of Hamburg, Université de Lyon, Institut Universitaire de France, Université de Lorraine, Centre Hospitalier de Nancy, and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS: Olfactory-to-visual facilitation in the infant brain declines gradually from 4 to 12 months, Child Development (2024). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14124


Smell of human stress can affect dogs' emotions, leading them to make more pessimistic choices
Jul 2024, phys.org

Dogs experience emotional contagion from the smell of human stress.

The researchers recruited 18 dog-owner partnerships to take part in a series of trials with different human smells present. During the trials, dogs were trained that when a food bowl was placed in one location, it contained a treat, but when placed in another location, it was empty. Once a dog learned the difference between these bowl locations, they were faster to approach the location with a treat, which reflected 'optimism', while a slow approach indicated 'pessimism'.

These trials were repeated while each dog was exposed to either no odor or the odors of sweat and breath samples from humans in either a stressed or relaxed state. The stress smell made dogs slower to approach the ambiguous bowl.

via University of Bristol Veterinary School: Parr-Cortes, Zoe ; Muller, Carsten T ; Talas, Laszlo et al, The odour of an unfamiliar stressed or relaxed person affects dogs' responses to a cognitive bias test, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66147-1


Emotional body odors may enhance the effect of mindfulness therapy
Nov 2024, phys.org

48 women with symptoms of social anxiety and 30 women with depression were divided into three different groups exposed to either happiness body odor, fear body odor, or clean air, then tasked with performing mindfulness exercises over two consecutive days.

"The results were quite surprising as we observed an enhanced symptom reduction for individuals with social anxiety that received chemosignals, regardless of whether they came from fear or happiness body odors. This may indicate that it is not the emotion itself that leads to the improved effect, but perhaps rather that chemosignals convey a kind of 'human presence.'"

Two nuanced results: 1. Exposure to fear body odor resulted in lower heart rate variability indicating a less relaxed state even though this was not reflected in the self-reported anxiety ratings, and 2. No differences were seen for the group with depressive symptoms, only anxiety.

via Karolinska Institutet and National Center for Suicide Research and Prevention: Cinzia Cecchetto et al, Sniffing out a solution: How emotional body odors can improve mindfulness therapy for social anxiety, Journal of Affective Disorders (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.088

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Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Inhibition Is So Hot Right Now


First, whoever says scientists don't have a sense of humor don't have a sense of humor.

Image credit: This imaginary perfume bottle illustrates the role pheromones play in Drosophila courtship decisions by featuring the silhouettes of a male chasing a courted female. Naming this fictional eau de pheromone “Dew Lover” was inspired by the etymological origin of the genus Drosophila, which is based on the modern scientific Latin adaptation of the Greek words drósos (“dew”) and phílos (“loving”). Vernier et al.  show that the coupling of the perception and production of some mating pheromones is regulated by the action of a pleiotropic pheromone receptor. Credit: Digital art by Yehuda Ben-Shahar, Washington University in St. Louis

Now for the main point -- up until recently, much of our understanding of olfactory perception came from looking at receptor activity. You expose a receptor to an odor and see if it lights up, and with that you make a kind of odor map coordinating odorant molecules and receptor proteins. 

Things are different now, because instead of just looking at how receptors are stimulated by odors, we also look at how they are inhibited, because it turns out there is just as much to be learned from receptor inhibition as there is activation. And, the interplay of activate-inhibit sure sounds a lot like the ons and offs of computer processing, meaning that the nose-brain may be a lot more useful as a model for a primitive computer than we thought.

Examining the chemicals involved in insect mating
Jan 2023, phys.org

Researchers reported that a single protein called Gr8a is expressed in different organs in male and female flies and appears to play an inhibitory role in mating decision-making. The findings point to one of the ways that flies could put up behavioral barriers to protect against mating with the wrong kind of partner.

"A single pleiotropic protein can function as both a receptor for pheromones in sensory neurons, as well as contribute to their production in the pheromone-producing cells (oenocytes) of males, by way of a less-understood process."

The scientists still have not pinpointed exactly how the chemoreceptor affects the way the signal is produced, but they do know that it causes quantitative and qualitative differences in pheromones. And even small changes in pheromones could be enough to keep closely related flies from finding each other attractive—and change their mate choice behaviors.

"Based on what we have observed, mutations in a single gene could provide a molecular path for a pheromonal communication system to evolve while still maintaining the functional coupling between a pheromone and its receptor," Ben-Shahar said. "Our research uncovers a potential avenue for pheromonal systems to rapidly evolve when new species arise."

Or when a species decides to rapidly evolve itself; looking at you mass population control.

via Washington University St Louis: Cassondra L. Vernier et al, A pleiotropic chemoreceptor facilitates the production and perception of mating pheromones, iScience (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105882


Post Script - Pheromones Again
Pachyderm perfume: How African elephants use odor to communicate
Apr 2023, phys.org

We tested the DNA, glands, urine and manure of 113 African elephants in wildlife parks in Malawi to identify family groupings," and "We found a number of chemicals were common to group members, but others that were unique to each individual, and found that smell was used to distinguish characteristics including age, health, reproductive status and family relationships between elephants.

"We observed elephants greeting each other by squealing and flapping their ears," he said.

"We believe they're pushing their pheromones towards the other elephant as a sign of recognition.

"When elephants charge each other flapping their ears, rather than making themselves look bigger, we believe they're blowing their pheromones as a warning not to mess with them."

"Some of the animals in the study were bred in captivity, and one of the tricks they'd been taught was to take a tourist's hat and smell it," he said.

"When the tourist came back hours later the elephant would be able to immediately identify who the hat belonged to."

via University of Queensland: Katharina E. M. von Dürckheim et al, A pachyderm perfume: odour encodes identity and group membership in African elephants, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-20920-2

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Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Stressed, Depressed, and Social Unrest


If you thought we had reached a new horizon of mass social behavior modification via electronic drugs  (ie social media and the consumer surveillance apparatus), then just wait until the smells show up. Smells have a direct line to the limbic system, which is called so because it controls your limbs; it literally makes you move, and it also controls your mood. 


Incorporating scents into a VR environment suitable for spacefarers
Jan 2023, phys.org

Building scents into a VR nature environment: A user could walk near a river in the VR environment and not only hear the sound of rushing water but also smell wet grass. This is accomplished by using hitboxes, which are invisible shapes in the VR environment that activate when the avatar collides with them.

When conducting their study, Abbott and Diaz Artiles measured users' anxiety levels before and after experiencing a stress-inducing event. The results showed that adding olfactory stimuli not only decreased users' anxiety levels after experiencing heightened stress but also reduced their stress and anxiety levels from their baseline.

via Texas A&M University College of Engineering: Renee (Woodruff) Abbott et al, The impact of digital scents on behavioral health in a restorative virtual reality environment, Acta Astronautica (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2022.05.025



Dogs can smell when we're stressed, study suggests
Oct 2022, phys.org
 
93.75% accuracy detecting changes in breath and sweat, before and after a fast-paced arithmetic task, along with self-reported stress levels, heart rate and blood pressure.

via Animal Behaviour Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and Newcastle University: Dogs can discriminate between human baseline and psychological stress condition odours, PLoS ONE (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274143

Chances are we can smell stress too, we're just not tuned-in to it. If you want proof, you can look at post-handshake-hand-sniffing behavior and think about how we're subconsciously measuring the stress levels of the people we shake hands with as a way to assess how we should react to them.  


And now for some thoughts about depression, anosmia and long covid:
Potential found to counter depression by restoring key brain rhythm
May 2023, phys.org

Effective communication between brain regions requires groups of neurons to synchronize their activity patterns in repetitive periods (oscillations) of joint silence followed by joint activity.

One such rhythm, called "gamma," repeats about 30 times or more in a second, and is an important timing pattern for the encoding of complex information, potentially including emotions.

Although its causes remain poorly understood, depression is reflected in gamma oscillation changes, according to past studies, as an electrophysiological marker of the disease in brain regions that manage the sense of smell, which have also been tied to emotions. 

"Our experiments revealed a mechanistic link between deficient gamma activity and behavioral decline in mice and rat models of depression, with the signal changes in the olfactory and connected limbic systems similar to those seen in depressed patients,"

Feeding an amplified olfactory bulb signal back into the brains of depressed rats restored normal gamma function in the limbic system, and reduced the depressive behaviors by 40 percent (almost to normal).

via NYU Grossman School of Medicine and University of Szeged in Hungary: Antal Berényi, Reinstating olfactory bulb derived limbic gamma oscillations alleviates depression-like behavioral deficits in rodents, Neuron (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.04.013.

Partially unrelated post script:
In case you're ever wondering how do they actually measure depression in mice, they get dunked in a bucket of water to see how long it takes for them to stop swimming -- the sooner they give up, the more depressed they are. 

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Friday, August 28, 2020

Headline Bingo

Once in a while, I end up with a whole bunch of headlines and not much inspiration. Here’s to clearing out the queue – 

Oldest material on Earth discovered

Jan 2020, BBC News

 

Dust grains within a space rock that crashed on Earth are found to be really old -- older than the Earth itself in fact. But I only came here to post this:

 

In order to analyze the rock, it has to be prepared... "Once all the pieces are segregated, it's a kind of paste, and it has a pungent characteristic – it smells like rotten peanut butter."

 

Asking yourself what rotten peanut butter smells like? Go find a tree-of-heaven, snap off a leaf, and smell it. It has to be a slightly older tree, not one just shooting out of the ground, or it will smell too mild and too much like not-rotten peanut butter.

 

 

Watch that smell! Scents can regulate fat storage

Apr 2020, phys.org

 

Honestly I can't even follow this, but it is a story that features the indispensable C. Elegans.

 

Ayse Sena Mutlu et al, Olfactory specificity regulates lipid metabolism through neuroendocrine signaling in Caenorhabditis elegans, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15296-8

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15296-8

 

 

New sleep method strengthens brain's ability to retain memories

Mar 2020, phys.org

 

"By triggering consolidation processes in only one side of the brain during sleep, we were able to compare the activity between the hemispheres and isolate the specific activity that corresponds to memory reactivation," -Prof. Yuval Nir of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience

 

While exposed to the scent of a rose, research participants were asked to remember the location of words presented on either the left or right side of a computer screen. Participants were then tested on their memory of the word locations, then proceeded to nap at the lab. As the participants were napping, the scent of roses was administered again, but this time to only one nostril.

 

With this "one-sided" odor delivery, the researchers were able to reactivate and boost specific memories that were stored in a specific brain hemisphere.

 

"Our findings emphasize that the memory consolidation process can be amplified by external cues such as scents," she concludes. "By using the special organization of the olfactory pathways, memories can be manipulated in a local manner on one side of the brain. Our finding demonstrates that memory consolidation likely involves a nocturnal 'dialogue' between the hippocampus and specific regions in the cerebral cortex." -Ella Bar, Ph.D. student at TAU and the Weizmann Institute of Science

 

Local Targeted Memory Reactivation in Human Sleep, Current Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.091

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.091

 

 

Study shows major gender differences in the human social brain

Mar 2020, phys.org

 

I bring this one up because it’s a general fact that women “smell better” than men, meaning they have a better sense of smell. Personally I think it’s because women tend to be better at communication and language, and smell has such a poor affinity for language. If women can use language better, then it will seem like they’re better at identifying and detecting smells, when really they’re just better at talking about something that most people never talk about in the first place.

 

The Data:

·      U.K. Biobank database, background data and MRI scans of the brains of 10,129 male and female participants.

·      36 parts of the brain involved in processing social cues and behavior.

·      Lifestyle factors such as how many people were in a household, whether a person was married, how much they enjoyed their relationships and degree of social support.

 

The Results:

·      Neuroanatomical associations in the amygdala that were predominant in socially stimulated women, but barely present in most of the males.

·      Differences in volume of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of men who lived alone versus those who were socially stimulated—variations not generally seen in the brains of the women under study.

 

Hannah Kiesow et al. 10,000 social brains: Sex differentiation in human brain anatomy, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1170

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1170

 

 

Smelling a rat - How rodents sniff out fake beggars

Mar 2020, phys.org

 

·      Lead author is Karin Schneeberger of the University of Potsdam in Germany.

·      They took rats that were either hungry from fasting overnight, or well-fed, and placed them in a room separate from the "focal" rat whose generosity they wanted to test.

·      Air from the rooms of the hungry or well-fed rats was pumped into the chamber of the focal rat.

·      They found that the focal rats were much quicker to provide help -- by pulling a food tray within reaching distance of another rat -- when the air was pumped from a hungry rat's room.

·      The authors then analyzed the air around the rats and found seven different organic compounds that differed significantly in their abundance between hungry and satiated rats.

·      These might result from recently ingested food sources, the metabolic processes involved in digestion, or possibly even a pheromone that indicates hunger.

·      Taken together, these signals form a "smell of hunger" for rats that serves as a reliable cue of need, said Schneeberger.

 

Schneeberger K, Röder G, Taborsky M (2020) The smell of hunger: Norway rats provision social partners based on odour cues of need. PLoS Biol 18(3): e3000628. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000628

 

 

Sweat sensor detects stress levels; May find use in space exploration

Mar 2020, phys.og

 

It detects cortisol in sweat. Another similar device measures uric acid in the blood.

 

Rebeca M. Torrente-Rodríguez et al, Investigation of Cortisol Dynamics in Human Sweat Using a Graphene-Based Wireless mHealth System, Matter (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2020.01.021

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2020.01.021

 

 

Scientists discover a new class of taste receptors

Apr 2020, phys.org

 

Our bodies, all bodies will be perpetually a source of wonder. Here we see how receptors meant for detecting light are used also to detect very small amounts of a bitter-tasting chemical: Much like rhodopsins turned on by very dim light, the chemically-activated opsins then initiated a molecular cascade that amplified the small signals. This enabled the flies to detect concentrations of the compound that would otherwise be insufficient to trigger a response in their sensory neurons.

 

Could you imagine if every pore on your body was an eyeball? Because it kind of already is.

 

Nicole Y. Leung et al, Functions of Opsins in Drosophila Taste, Current Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.068

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.068

 

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