Bob Pellegrino
@kingfunk.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University Human psychophysicist interested in all things smell and texture. 📸: @smellboi24_7
I wrote a new post on what we need to keep human and what to hand over to AI, with forays into experiments in education, consulting, and the the latest controversy over literary prizes. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/choosing-t...
Choosing to Stay Human
If you go to your favorite social media site, you will find it full of posts that start to look suspiciously similar to each other:
oneusefulthing.org
20% of people have impaired smell. Almost no cookbooks account for that. #LongCOVID #anosmia Rediscovering Flavor, a new type of cookbook, changes that — science, practical guidance, and recipes co-created with smell loss patients. Preorder open now. 🧪 📖 🍽️
Rediscovering Flavor: A Practical Guide for Smell Loss
Rediscovering Flavor: A Practical Guide for Smell Loss: 9783032080554: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com
amazon.com
Hiring a postdoc to do something nobody has done: record oscillatory signals from the human olfactory epithelium in awake humans. PhD in neuroscience, biomedical engineering, or adjacent. Real electrophysiology experience: single-unit, intracranial, or peripheral. Olfactory background optional.
Can we predict what a molecule smells like from its structure? A new exchange in @ChemSenses debates this question. 🧪 @kingfunk.bsky.social
Howdy Y'all, I'm running a sensory lab now 👀 The lab focuses on smells (duh), textures (🤔), and their interactions using big data approaches to relate the physical to the perceptual. Lab manager posting linked here. Interested in a PhD? Just message me!
Lab Manager
Job TitleLab Manager Agency Texas A&M Agrilife Research Department Animal Science Proposed Minimum SalaryCommensurate Job LocationCollege Station, Texas Job TypeStaff Job Description About Texas A...
tamus.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Call for chapter proposals - The OUP Handbook of Smell edited by Jessica Freiherr, Andreas Keller, Kathrin Ohla, Laiquan Zou, & Benjamin Young and published by Oxford University Press (under contract). Full details here: philevents.org/event/show/1... Please share widely.
The OUP Handbook of Smell - Call for chapter proposals
Call for chapter proposals - The OUP Handbook of Smell We are seeking chapter proposals of The OUP Handbook of Smell. The handbook will be edited by Jessica Freiherr, Andreas Keller, Kathrin...
philevents.org
Postdoc position in systems neuroscience! Excited to recruit a postdoc for my lab at the University of Bonn. 🔬 In vivo physiology (Neuropixels, 2P/miniscope) 🐭 Head-fixed & freely moving behaviour 💡 Optogenetics/chemogenetics ⏳ Start: ASAP | Application deadline: 28.02.2026 More info below ⬇️
🚨Scientists 🚨: Tired of come-ons from journals & conferences that may or may not be predatory? A new tool called Aletheia-Probe could help. 🧪 By @silverjacket.bsky.social @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Is this journal legitimate? This tool can help you decide
Aletheia-Probe provides a one-stop shop to help you assess whether journals and conferences are trustworthy or predatory.
nature.com
A long, absolutely must-read article from Cory Doctorow: www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow
AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots
theguardian.com
High-Fidelity Tuning of Olfactory Mixture Distances in the Perceptual Space of Smell Through a Community Effort https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.13.694160v1
1/3 The humble glass jar is a workhorse in olfactory research, but comes w/ hidden problems: - Unknown headspace concentration - Concentration dilution by ambient air These add noise to odor measurements. Our preprint introduces something new, something bag.🧪 @jmainland.bsky.social & Matt Andres
Odor Sampling Bags Enable Reliable Delivery of Controlled Odor Concentrations
Precise control of odorant concentration is essential for reliable olfactory research, yet existing odorant delivery methods often suffer from solvent interactions and dilution from ambient air, limiting stimulus consistency in olfactory research. We developed an odor sampling bag system using Nalophan plastic to create a closed headspace with air as the carrier medium, eliminating solvent-related variability and ambient air dilution. In two independent experiments, 15 trained panelists each rated the perceived intensity of seven concentrations of benzaldehyde and 2-heptanone using both gas-sampling bags and glass jars. Bags produced higher maximum perceptual intensities (p < 0.001) and greater test-retest reliability than jars (Experiment 1: r = 0.89 vs. 0.81, p < 0.001; Experiment 2: r = 0.86 vs. 0.72, p < 0.001). Notably, the two tested odorants showed different maximum intensities in bags (p < 0.001) but not jars (p = 0.85), suggesting bags better preserve odorant-specific concentration differences. Photoionization detector measurements confirmed stable headspace concentrations over time, comparable to industry-standard Tedlar bags. This cost-effective approach offers improved stimulus control for olfactory psychophysics research. ### Competing Interest Statement Joel D. Mainland serves on the scientific advisory board of Osmo Labs, PBC and receives compensation for these activities. National Institutes of Health, https://ror.org/01cwqze88, F32 DC020380, T32 DC000014, U19 NS112953, R01 DC017757, R01 DC021663
biorxiv.org
Superior cf what? Full of ultraprocessed constituents. The relentless and inappropriate marketing of David protein bars Here's a roundup of facts about protein intake and unnecessary preoccupation erictopol.substack.com/p/our-preocc...
1/5 Odor intensity isn’t just about concentration! We have a new preprint to prove it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... In cahoots with @jmainland.bsky.social, @alexkoulakov.bsky.social, Rick Gerkin, Khristina Samoilova and others not on bluesky. 🧪 Which of these molecules smells stronger?
New preprint! tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵 w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Computational Urban Ecology of New York City Rats
Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environme...
biorxiv.org
Sometimes I forget that Todd Rundgren doesn't want to work but just wants to bang on the drum all day.
Distinguishing performance gains from learning when using generative AI Comment by Lixiang Yan, Samuel Greiff, Jason M. Lodge & Dragan Gašević go.nature.com/3FJqTq3
Large language models (LLMs) can mirror human thinking in vision and language, but can they smell and taste? New study with @rbrainengineer.bsky.social show stochastic LLMs rate creative flavor pairings like humans, prioritizing novelty over taste. #AI #creativity #foodscience
Automating chemosensory creativity assessment with large language models
Chemosensory creativity, the ability to innovate using taste and smell, is a crucial yet understudied aspect of human ingenuity. This study explores t…
sciencedirect.com
ACOG is deeply disappointed by HHS’s move to drop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations in pregnancy. The science is clear: COVID-19 remains dangerous in pregnancy and vaccination protects both patients and newborns. The vaccine is safe and protects families. Read our full statement: buff.ly/OGue7sO
Regular smell and taste testing could aid early detection of impairments that negatively impact health, safety, and quality of life, and could also reveal underlying disease. But how do we get there? This new whitepaper is out today:
Towards Universal Chemosensory Testing: Needs, Barriers and Opportunities
doi.org
One of the few bands I’ve been listening to since the 90s and still putting out great stuff
Lust For Gold
YouTube video by Starflyer 59 - Topic
m.youtube.com
With a contemporary smartphone, capturing, transmitting, and replicating sounds and visuals is a breeze, yet replicating scents remains elusive. If you want to change this, consider joining the 2025 DREAM Olfaction Challenge at www.synapse.org/Synapse:syn6.... @oldbap.bsky.social
DREAM Olfactory Mixtures Prediction Challenge 2025
'DREAM Olfactory Mixtures Prediction Challenge 2025' (Synapse ID: syn64743570) is a project on Synapse. Synapse is a platform for supporting scientific collaborations centered around shared biomed...
synapse.org
Most people haven’t heard of this test, which is available in the US. It accurately predicts Alzheimer’s (not just if there’s a risk, but when). It is modulated by exercise and likely other lifestyle factors. Here’s (almost) everything we know about it erictopol.substack.com/p/the-breakt...
Excited to share the sequel to our 2022 paper! In this follow-up, we show that the stable head direction (HD) signals we reported in blind mice rely on stereo olfaction—that is, the comparison of odor info. between the two nostrils. Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵highlights below
Stereo olfaction underlies stable coding of head direction in blind mice - Nature Communications
Stereo olfaction involves comparing odor differences between the two nostrils. Here, using neuronal recordings and a behavioral test, the authors demonstrate that blind mice use stereo olfaction to fo...
nature.com
Very proud of this paper, which spans three decades of work. (1/17) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Piriform cortex is an ictogenic trigger zone in the primate brain
Objective Area tempestas, a functionally defined region in the anterior piriform cortex, was identified as a crucial ictogenic trigger zone in the rat brain in the 1980s. However, whether the primat...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025! Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide! #scienceforall #sciencenotsilence
New video tracking suite for social behavior + large dataset to benchmark other tracking suites.
Mapping the landscape of social behavior
Computer vision and machine learning approaches map a multi-scale social behavioral landscape, revealing ASD signatures and establishing an atlas of rodent sociality.
cell.com