Last Month on Scienceline

This month on Scienceline was a sensory delight. Ritchie King ponders the vocabulary of smell, or lack thereof, while Stephanie Warren delivers a mouth-watering account of cookie chemistry. Can you smell those sweet Maillard reactions?

Slightly less drool-inducing is Sabrina Richards' description of the poison-filled rodents that rained down on the jungles of Guam—hopefully a tasty last meal for the region's invasive brown tree snake.

Madeleine Johnson explains how scents like lavender can be used therapeutically as antipsychotics in the nursing homes. Meanwhile, Mary Beth Griggs debunks the myth that a certain sparkly lavender gemstone prevents drunkenness. She further delights our eyeballs with photos of winter wildlife tracks, in Scienceline's first-ever slideshow.

Doug Main gives us a rolling history of the tumbleweed, that iconic tumbling traveler of dusty terrains.

Listen to the terrifying mating call of the cuddly koala bear, courtesy of Rose Eveleth's "Sounds like Science" blog. Trust us, you'll be surprised.

Blast off with Sarah Fecht to Mars, to search for DNA.  Then come back to Earth, and let Douglas Main and Rose Eveleth take you to the woods to search for a different kind of DNA, in seeds.

Doug and Rose didn't use a map to get to their Staten Island forest, but they could have used one built by citizens, Francie Diep explains.

Long before we made maps, Neanderthals made tools.  Marybeth Griggs investigates how good they could have been at it.

Are you creative or organized?  Curious or conventional?  Expressive or reserved?  Lena Groeger investigates how your answers to those questions may or may not betray your political leanings, and whether psychology is biased towards liberals.

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