Eideard

Could have been worse!

A bird drawn into the engine of a plane taking off in New York made the cabin smell like chicken was being cooked, passengers said.

JetBlue Flight 757 to Aruba, with 109 people aboard, returned to John F. Kennedy International Airport and landed safely at 12:30 p.m. Saturday…

“Suddenly the plane smelled like chicken,” said passenger Gina Vicinanza. “I thought, ‘Wow! They have hot food on this plane…’ “

At least 13 bird encounters with planes have occurred at the airport this year

I love barbecue; but, there are limits. I really prefer grilling over natural chunk charcoal over whirling my food with Jet A 1.

Knitted from Fruit Loops

Kellogg is voluntarily recalling about 28 million boxes of Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals because an unusual smell and flavor from the packages’ liners could make people ill…

Kellogg is trying to identify the substance on the liners that’s causing the problem and is offering consumers refunds in the meantime.

The products were distributed throughout the U.S. and began arriving in stores in late March.

Only products with the letters “KN” following the use-by date are included in the recall. Products in Canada are not affected.

Too bad they had to retrieve this crap so soon. Probably had a shelf life good for another decade or so.

Artist’s impression of an ant’s odor map

Desert ants in Tunisia smell in stereo, sensing odours from two different directions at the same time.

By sniffing the air with each antenna, the ants form a mental ‘odour map’ of their surroundings. They then use this map to find their way home, say scientists who report the discovery in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Pigeons, rats and even people may also smell in stereo, but ants are the first animal known to use it for navigation…

Each day, individual ants will leave the nest entrance and travel up to 100m in search of food. When they find some, they return straight home, somehow finding their tiny nest entrance again within a bleak, relatively featureless desert landscape.

But Dr Markus Knaden’s team has now found that the insect does much more than that.

First, they placed four odours marked A, B, C and D around a barely visible nest entrance.

They then tested the ants by removing and placing them in a remote location, without a nest entrance but with the same four odours. The ants immediately headed to exactly where their nest should have been, confirming that they use the odours as olfactory landmarks.

When the odours were mixed up, the ants became confused and unable to navigate their way home.

“They had learned the olfactory scenery,” Dr Knaden told the BBC.

This seems so logical you have to agree with Dr. Knaden and presume other species are doing the same. He has decades of interesting experimentation ahead.

People are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments, according to a soon-to-be published study led by a Brigham Young University professor. The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.

Katie Liljenquist…is the lead author on the piece in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science…

“Companies often employ heavy-handed interventions to regulate conduct, but they can be costly or oppressive,” said Liljenquist, whose office smells quite average. “This is a very simple, unobtrusive way to promote ethical behavior.”

He’s very clean…!

The study titled “The Smell of Virtue” was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex.

The first experiment evaluated fairness. As a test of whether clean scents would enhance reciprocity, participants played a classic “trust game.” Subjects received $12 of real money (allegedly sent by an anonymous partner in another room). They had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who had trusted them to divide it fairly…

The second experiment evaluated whether clean scents would encourage charitable behavior. Subjects indicated their interest in volunteering with a campus organization for a Habitat for Humanity service project and their interest in donating funds to the cause…

“Basically, our study shows that morality and cleanliness can go hand-in-hand,” said Galinsky of the Kellogg School. “Researchers have known for years that scents play an active role in reviving positive or negative experiences. Now, our research can offer more insight into the links between people’s charitable actions and their surroundings…”

Har! I could relate some of my adventures on the BYU campus back in the day – right about here. But, our site would probably be relegated to the “Adult” bin.