Smelling: It's More Than Meets the Olfactory Epithelium
The ability to take a chemical sample of the environment and interpret that sample has long been a skill of earth dwelling life forms. We don't tend to think of the sense of smell as a mechanism that analyzes physical specimens. It is sort of a repulsive notion, considering some of the undesirable substances we are forced to smell every day. But, just as we cannot feel a book without touching it, we cannot smell an orange without guiding some orange molecules up our noses. The capacity that humans divide into smell and taste has a single evolutionary precursor. This was a common chemical sense that enabled single-celled organisms to identify food and alert themselves to the presence of harmful substances. While it is among the oldest and most universal senses employed by living creatures, science has been slow to understand it. One roadblock to knowledge progression has been the inherent difficulty in experimenting with the chemical senses. Delivering precisely timed and quantitatively accurate amounts of chemical stimuli to receptors is a technological challenge, but often necessary in the study of olfaction (1). While in many animals, the chemical senses play the most important role in perception and survival, in humans they are less involved in behavior than sight or hearing. This relative insignificance is another reason why olfaction has received scientific short shrift. It has been comparatively neglected by our culture as well--the English language does not include a sufficient vocabulary for describing odors. It is very difficult to verbally depict an odor to an individual who has never encountered it. Our understanding of smell is ever increasing, and while some big questions remain, others are continually being answered.
The olfactory epithelium of each of the two nasal passages in humans is a 2.5 square centimeter patch containing about 50 million sensory receptor cells (3). The reception of the odorant and the beginning of sensory signal transduction occurs in the olfactory cilia, which are hair-like extensions of the receptor neurons (10-20 cilia per neuron). The neurons have a turn-over rate of about 40 days (3). On the opposite side of the cilia, within the epithelium, the neurons form axons which penetrate the cribiform bone in bundles and synapse with neurons in the olfactory bulb (2). Via the olfactory tract, (cranial nerve I), olfactory information travels to the primary olfactory cortex without first passing through the thalamus.
SooToday.com. (2007, May 15). Constable Bryan Bertoncello Honoured by Ontario Provincial Police. Ontario, Canada: SooToday.com . Retrieved November 18, 2013, from http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/full_story.asp?StoryNumber=24666
The first way Laila’s brain guesses that her fiends have ordered pizza at the dorm is because of her ability to smell the pizza. Her ability to smell is because her first cranial nerve, also known as the olfactory nerve, is functioning well. This nerve is responsible for relaying sensory data to the brain and results in the sense of smell. Olfactory receptors are located in the mucosa in the nasal cavity. When airborne chemicals and particles travel to the nasal cavity, they interact with the receptors. Despite the olfactory nerve being part of the nervous system, it does not join the brainstem and is considered the shortest cranial nerve. When Laila breathes in air, the molecules attach to her olfactory mucosa and her olfactory receptors
Did you ever think that books that have sex, obscene language, and immoral subjects can make a good book? The Catcher in the Rye has been on the banned reading list for exactly those reasons. The book was mainly put on disapproval from between 1966 and 1975 in almost every school district in the United States. The book was said to be so bad that in 1960 a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was fired for assigning the book to an eleventh-grade English class. Despite some opposition to the novel, however, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye should be on a reading list for the freshman students because it gives a crystal clear image on how the world is in violence, sex, and obscenity and the book also teaches the motifs of lying and deception.
2011). This hypothesis was put to the test by Pelchat et al. in 2011, who had volunteers donate both regular urine and asparagus urine, then presented the volunteers with samples of urine from all the volunteers to see whether or not they could detect the scent in the samples, of not just their own urine but in others as well. The results of this experiment revealed that six percent of the volunteers were unable to detect the asparagus odor in the urine samples, which highly suggests that there is an anosmia present for the asparagus odor. However, these results do not prove the anosmia because the urine samples used contained varying amounts of the sulfurous compounds meaning that some of the samples could have had ample amounts of the sulfur molecules while other samples could have had lesser amounts making it either easier or more difficult for the different subject’s to perceive the odor. Much like the experiment conducted by Lison et al. in 1980 this experiment really just proved that at varying concentrations different people can smell the odor. It did not present clear cut data that proved whether there really are “smellers” and “nonsmellers.”
The main themes of Catcher in the Rye did have parts to do with sexual interaction and alcohol. Yes, these things are often frowned upon in our society for teenagers or “young adults.” Teachers and parents seem to believe for the most part that students who read this book are more likely to join in on sexual activity or drinking alcohol at an illegal age. The students should be given more credit than that. Although this society is a lot of “follow the leader,” that does not mean these kids would feel the need to do this activities.
“The Catcher in the Rye” has some issues about the inappropriate content that is in the book. For example, Holden, the main character, curses more than most people would like to see when reading a book. It seems as though there is at least one curse word in every sentence that he says. That can make people stop reading the book right away once they see that the book is going to be like that. The sexual connotations in the book could also lead to people disliking the book. In the book Holden says, “Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. Y...
Of her hundreds of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” continues to be widely discussed among literary critics. In his article “Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, David Gratz claims that Oates’s story can be read as a parable for a young girl’s fear of adulthood. He agrees there is much textual evidence that Connie dreams of her disturbing experience with Arnold Friend and that he is a “psychological projection” (Gratz 55) of her subconscious fears. Gratz notes how critics Joan Winslow and Larry Rubin point out that Connie appears to fall asleep before Arnold Friend arrives to her home and that her inability to control the situation toward the end is of a nightmarish quality (55). There is further evidence which supports the idea that Connie is in fact dreaming this scenario. Gratz notes that though the ending represents the “death of a part of her” (55), it is not only the destruction brought on by her sex drive she fears. Rather, it is her fear of the inevitability of growing older and having to endure hard changes that come with it that projects itself onto Connie’s daymare.
“In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, the story revolves around a 15 year old girl named Connie. She tells us in the beginning about how her relationship with her mother and the rest of her family is, and how they interact with each other. It focuses on this girl and her activities of being defiant. She goes out with her friends on a weekly basis and continues to hang out with guys that she interacts with when she’s out, and sees this guy in his car that left an impression on her. Whenever her family leaves for the day to go to a barbecue, that guy comes to her house, and she ends up terrified of him. In the end, she is not herself and walks into something that is different in her eyes, like a place she had never seen before. In this story, I think there are many different ways to interpret what is happening and what is being said. What I read was a story of a girl who lost her way and a man, somewhat resembling the devil shows up to her door and coerces her into leaving her old life behind.
Woven into the twisted short story by Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” stands a figure of demonic proportions; a man whose mere presence develops into an ominous fear, bringing with him a thickness of anxiety and an eerie sense of premature death. While her parents are away on a Sunday afternoon, Connie is approached by a strange man named Arnold Friend who is determined to seduce her and steal her away. Rather than use force, Arnold Friend insinuates his way into Connie’s mind and subdues her vulnerable and emerging sexuality. In the end, Oates indicates that he leads her to her death, whether spiritual or physical, and that his love is empty, but she is powerless against him. Within this novella lies a battle of wits between a young girl and a demonic man who is the metaphorical illusion of a fate – the fate of isolation and death.
The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 created a lasting affect on the societal role of women through modern day Iran. Women in Iran before the revolution were not entirely treated equal to men, but despite some cultural perceptions of women being inferior to men, they had made progress to become socially equal under the Shah. Several misconceptions and theories have been published and studied to show the inequality of women versus men because of Islam. However, contrasting theories have also been made to show that inequality has little to do with the religion, but instead with the forceful nature upon which it was implemented in the revolution. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the Islamic and political history of Iran and its social implications over Iranian women.
Science is used to explain everything. However, there are some topics which are disputed in the scientific community. One such topic is the proposed question, “How do we, humans, smell?” As for the answer to this question, there are two main theories which should be mentioned. The first is a theory based on the idea that the shape of a molecule determines it’s scent in the human nose (TED). The second such answer is the theory that smell is linked to the vibrational frequency of a molecule (TED). This latter notion is one argued effectively by Luca Turin, a biophysicist who is part of the perfuming business (TED). Turin is the chief modern scientist when it comes to this vibrational theory, though he was not the first to realize the idea’s possibility as an accepted piece of scientific information (TED). Not only is he experienced when it comes to the matter, having written multiple titles, such as The Secret of Scent, but he also discussed by other authors, as seen in The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr (TED). Clearly, he is a man that is has had much influence in discovering information about how the sense of smell works. Moreover, he will continue to expand his discoveries as he has plans to take part in the attempt to create an artificial nose at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (TED). With this in mind, it is without a doubt that Turin’s theory of scent based on the vibrational properties of molecules is true.
Jones, D. H. (2006-2010). Chapter 3: The Nervous System and the Brain. Retrieved from http://www.nasalspecific.com/nasalspecific_011.htm
There are numerous types of non-verbal communication, yet one of the most underestimated is the olfactics, or our sense of smell. It is generally assumed that the greater portion of the sensory world and communication is experienced through the auditory and visual senses. However, the underrated impact of our sense of smell is increasingly becoming acknowledged as a powerful communicator. The human nose has the capacity to differentiate between 1
5) Olfactory Receptors, Vomeronasal Receptors, and the Organization of Olfactory Information. From Cell, a journal
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