Senses

The solar eclipse’s path of totality stretches across North America in a roughly 115-mile-long band, from Mexico to Canada.

Listen Live to the Total Solar Eclipse, Transformed Into a Real-Time Musical Composition

A composer based at San Francisco’s Exploratorium museum will use data coming from the eclipsed sun to create an out-of-this-world “sonification” on April 8

A composite image showing multiple stages of 2019's solar eclipse as seen from Chile.

This Handheld Device Allows Blind People to Experience the Solar Eclipse With Their Ears

The technology, which translates the intensity of sunlight into a range of sounds, was designed to make eclipses more accessible to visually impaired people

These digitally edited images show how Victor Sharrah perceives faces.

This Extremely Rare Neurological Condition Makes Faces Appear Distorted or 'Like a Demon'

For the first time, scientists have recreated what one patient suffering from prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO, sees when he looks at faces

Fabrizio Fidati, a 57-year-old amputee, uses the MiniTouch device with his prosthetic to accurately sort cubes of different temperatures.

In a First, a Prosthetic Limb Can Sense Temperature Like a Living Hand

The advance may help users feel a greater sense of human connection through touch

Example predictions of smell-related objects from the object detection models developed by the Odeuropa project computer vision team. Image credits: J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Floris Claesz. van Dijck, Still Life with Cheeses, c. 1615', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8296 (accessed 23 October 2023 11:21:47).  

A New Encyclopedia Explores Europe's Smelly History

Odeuropa is an online database of scents from 16th- to early 20th-century Europe culled from historical literature and art

The Aftel Archive of Curious Scents has been drawing commercial perfumers with a nose for aromas, gardeners, cooks and others since 2017.

This California Museum Is Home to Hundreds of Nature's Scents

Perfumer Mandy Aftel's spellbinding collection of rare essences and artifacts is on display at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley

Scientists have long debated how we perceive the absence of sound waves hitting our ears.

We Can Hear Silence Like a Sound, Scientists Say

In a study, participants were tricked by "silence illusions" in the same way that illusions with sound fool the brain

Sarracenia pitcher plants typically live in bogs in the southeastern United States.

Carnivorous Plants May Lure Insects With Specially Tailored Scents

Pitcher plants appear to use different odor cocktails to attract bees, moths, ants and other bugs into their death traps

The strategy an animal uses to track a scent depends upon a number of factors, including the animal’s body shape and the amount of turbulence in the odor plume.

Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out How Animals Follow a Scent to Its Source

Uncovering the varied strategies that animals employ could help engineers develop robots that accomplish similar tasks

Ants don't have noses, but they detect scents using antennae atop their heads.

These Ants Were Trained to Sniff Out Cancer

In just ten minutes, an ant could learn to identify urine from mice with cancerous tumors, a new study finds

Examples of computing hardware architecture supporting an AR and IR environment inside a car of the near future are displayed at the Valeo booth at CES 2023 in Las Vegas.

Eight Cool New Technologies From This Year's Consumer Electronics Show

Flying cars, live-translation eyeglasses, self-driving strollers and more were unveiled at the annual trade show in Las Vegas

This year’s picks include Fresh Banana Leaves, Origin and Starry Messenger.

The Ten Best Science Books of 2022

From a detective story on the origins of Covid-19 to a narrative that imagines a fateful day for dinosaurs, these works affected us the most this year

New research suggests earbuds may be an affordable, low-stigma alternative to hearing aids for some people.

Are AirPods the Hearing Aids of the Future?

New research suggests that personal sound amplification products like earbuds may help some people hear better in certain scenarios

A new study provides further evidence that dogs really are man's best friend.

Dogs Can Smell When You’re Stressed Out

A small study suggests that highly sensitive canine noses can pick up on the odors that frazzled humans emit

Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, The Sense of Smell, 1617–1618

What Does This 17th-Century Painting Smell Like?

A new exhibition in Spain incorporates ten fragrances inspired by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens' "The Sense of Smell"

The coronavirus is suspected to attack specific cells in the nose that help olfactory nerves, which sense smell, operate. 

Up to 1.6 Million People in the U.S. Have Long-Term Smell Loss Due to Covid-19

After six months of smell loss, the chance of recovery drops to less than 20 percent, and around 5 percent of all cases will result in permanent loss

Living Like a Tudor draws on the five senses to offer a vivid portrait of Tudor life. Pictured here is a procession overseen by the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I.

What Did Tudor England Look, Smell and Sound Like?

A new book by scholar Amy Licence vividly transports readers back to the 16th century

The Nobel committee announced the winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, earlier today.

Scientists Studied Spicy Chili Peppers and Cool Menthol for Their Nobel Prize–Winning Research on Heat and Touch

Their independent discoveries answer fundamental questions about how we sense our environment and could lead to breakthrough pain relief treatments

This month's book picks include The Engagement, How the Word Is Passed and Drunk.

The Fight to Legalize Gay Marriage, the Woman Who Couldn't Be Silenced and Other New Books to Read

These June releases elevate overlooked stories and offer insights on oft-discussed topics

In a lab experiment, a blind 58-year-old male volunteer was able to identify the position of two cups after receiving a new type of gene therapy.

New Gene Therapy Partially Restores Sight to Blind Man

Researchers inserted genes that code for light-sensitive proteins in algae into the man’s retina, and now he reports limited but much improved vision

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