What's in a name for a rose that smells so sweet

Discovered just yesterday that there are several people who cannot recall or relive a familiar smell. Olfactory memory, if you like, is not as common as i imagined it to be. well not really olfactory memory per se. these people do remember the smell in the sense that if they close their eyes and a smell is presented to them, they can recall what it is of. eg. that of a rose, or a mint leaf. they also know that these things have a characteristics smell and that they are different from certain other closely related smells (example the smell of damp clothes vs that of first shower of rain on dry grounds; smell of socks vs smell of a decaying animal). they know that each of these have a characteristics smell and if the stimuli are presented to them they can identify them by the smell alone.... but in absence of the stimuli they are unable to remember/recall/relive the smell. This of course is confounded by the problem of Qualia ( as explained to me by a lab mate) where what I perceive and how I perceive it to be may not be the same as what someone else does but we agree to give that stimulus a certain name. It may actually mean (in terms of perception) very different things to us.
Read more on Qualia, it seems to me as a very interesting topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia ( for the start). This is indepdent of the problem of Qualia I feel. The point here is: I sense it, do you sense it at all. The problem of Qualia will arise if only the answer to the question is yes. If the answer is No then we are probably not into this mess of Qualia. However, one may argue what is 'No' to me is not the no to the other person. As in the threshold that my brain has to cross to send signals that it is feeling/experiencing something will vary from person to person.

None-the-less.. the olfactory reliving of memory was something I had so taken for granted but it seems it is not a common thing at all. If yo think of it, both auditory and visual stimulus are so strong in us humans that reliving a auditory memory (remembering voices of people you know) and 'remembering' the face of people you know, of landscape, objects etc is not hard at all (auditor stimuli being harder to relive as compared to visual in humans). Close you eyes and think of a rose you can get the picture of a rose. But can you recall its smell? looks like many cant!! Close your eyes and think of a writing on a board with chalk. The high freq noise.. can you 'remember'/ relive it? It will not be too hard but can you remember the smell of chalk....

I am so excited that I want to do my post-doc in Olfaction. Years back I spoke to a prof about how visual communication and acoustic sommunication have advanced so much but why not olfactory.. as in, if i open a page in the book that has a picture of the rose.. i can see it.. i should also be able to smell it.. so to communicate the smell.. he said tht it was a young field of research and people are looking at it. But this memory this is cool stuff! So what if a nobel has already been given on olfaction in 2004! big deal! By that argument we should have stopped doing behavior many many years back!

some stuff on olfactory memory can be found in the links given below these do not necessarily discuss reliving olfactory memory ( like you can see familiar faces in your dream or familiar voices in your dream... similarly recreating in a vague sense the smells in your mind) but are interesting independently..

http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/smell/memory.html
WIKI of course
http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/suppl_1/i236

 Being from a neurobio lab, rather inspite of being from a neurobio lab I somehow took reliving olfactory memories for granted (as in case of visual or auditory stimulus) but it is obviously not the case. I caught Rohini yesterday after coffeee and asked her if she could relive smells and she said she cant either(as many of my lab mates) then she said...." but it seems some people claim that they can... we dont know!... but there is some research going in this field" and i could see all eyes directed at me...
meekly I said..... mmm...... I Can.

Happy days ahead

back in familiar territory now. doing my acoustics as opposed to foilage density, vegetation structure BS!
The first two chapters took away a lot of time for me both in data collection, analyses and in the struggle for publication. it was not very rewarding. The paper corresponding to the first chapter did not even manage to get published in an international journal (not to mention how like a smart-ass I withdrew my paper from an international journal after acceptance!).
The problem, with the kind of work I am doing is that it is very very hard to get data, both logistically and in the time it takes.... but it is equally difficult and time consuming to do the analyses. It takes months to analyse recordings as opposed to putting all your experiment results/observation into an excel sheet and doing a chi-square or ANNOVA.
anyway, the point being I am happy to be back and thankful that I have days of signal analyses ahead. not tht it is going to be a cake walk either. I know there is no such thing as a cake walk in research. It all takes time and effort. but what matters is whether you are happy putting in so much effort in it. Job satisfaction may I say? ;)

An eclipsed new year

Very rough last couple of months. bad year ending (but i am glad it ended) and an eclipsed new year, literally. It has been a very rough ride and the storm is still going strong, though I have managed to scramble and resurface.

Sick of reading about WHO reports on the internet, tired of visiting hospitals and doctors, taking close ones for X-rays, operations, PFTs, MRI, physiotherapy...... 2009 has been terrible.. the year of hospital visits largely. Not to mention 'referee fatigue'!

Been out of the radar for quite a while now both personally and professionally... didn't quiet enjoy it.

in short, 2009 was a true roller-coaster-ride

End of fieldwork, goodbye to Kudremukh
Wedding(s), friends and family get-togethers
Road accident, operation, hospital, doctors, XRAYs, physiotherapy
Conference, contacts, travel and good times with crepes, barley, wine and bread
Paper reject without review, next reject in spite of brilliant review, next reject after meaningless unscientific criticism, slander and surprisingly obvious discrimination
Second paper sent back since it does not concern any wildlife heavy-weights, insects are probably fit only to be stamped.... so what if careful scientific observations were made and meticulous calculations went into it... who cares for the science anyways?
The worst part of the year that spilled over to the next one... another close one down with the most feared and dangerous of all! Brain tumor.... start of a long torturous journey for my close ones. It is incredible how little advance we have made in medical science in so many centuries!

Besides the stress of hospital visits, I also discovered how difficult it becomes when our personal space is infringed by others including our own family. Tried really hard to be fair to everyone but it is hard. At last I had to say... ok people I am tired of all this. I want to stand by you when you are going through  a storm but for all practical purposes, I cannot sail through the storm with you. I need to get out of all this mess! Every time this thought comes to my mind I feel selfish and inhuman but now the stress is getting on my nerves. It will do to be selfish for a while.

Wanted to get away for a weekend and called a mate if I could spend some time in the forest listening to the birds... but as expected from her, it did not work out.

BTW someone told me that she saw crescent-shaped shadows yesterday during the eclipse and I argued with her for a while about how such shadows could possibly form. To confess, I also laughed at her over-zealous imagination behind her back. But see what I found....

 http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/01apr_solareclipse.htm
(sorry image copied from google, dont have one of my own)

http://www.suntrek.org/hot-solar-atmosphere/solar-eclipse/baileys-beads-crescent-suns.shtml

go read about Bailey's beads.

feel like a fool one more time ;) do leave links of how such shadows are formed if you find any
.
Many years ago in calcutta, the experience of seeing stars in the day, watching and hearing the confused (maybe) birds fly back to their roosts and return back in a matter of minutes and then total darkness.... hearing anuja's joyous screams from the terrace ( the only kid who escaped the watchful eyes of my grandpa and was rewarded with the diamond ring) was nothing short of ecstasy...someday I want to see a total solar eclipse over the sea.  Spent this solar eclipse and the first couple of weeks of this new year running from one room in the hospital to the other, collecting reports and listening to (helpless) doctors. Hoping that the rest of the year will be different.