I Smell Earth

Why do food and drink smell like earth?

Fungi have long been associated with earthy odours. One of the main contributors to this odour is geosmin, a sesquiterpenoid metabolite produced by soil living fungi. Some food commodities are liable to contamination by geosmin producing fungi. Under favourable environmental conditions the production of geosmin occurs. One of the producers of geosmin in fruits is Penicillium expansum which also...

Earth Abundant Element Type I Clathrate Phases

Earth abundant element clathrate phases are of interest for a number of applications ranging from photovoltaics to thermoelectrics. Silicon-containing type I clathrate is a framework structure with the stoichiometry A8-xSi46 (A = guest atom such as alkali metal) that can be tuned by alloying and doping with other elements. The type I clathrate framework can be described as being composed of two...

To smell or not to smell? That is the question!

The Smell of Representations

ingful and are expected to elicit robust and reproducible The nose and palate never doubt / Their verdict on the physiological and behavioral responses. All of the above world without, / But instantaneously condemn / Or may facilitate the correlation of stimuli with the neuronal, praise each fact that reaches them: / ... Compared with physiological, and behavioral response. almost any brute, / ...

The intentionality of smell

If any sense modality represents, vision does, but argument is needed to show that smell does. This paper rebuts two reasons for doubting that smell represents, and offers several arguments that it does. The paper then considers several recent proposals as to exactly what a smell represents, and defends a version of the author's original proposal-that a smell represents a miasma in the air-agai...