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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,

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Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger. Pardon me, fragrances your book wearing researchers

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Speaker 1: at University College London suggests that the nose knows get it.

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Speaker 1: In an extensive study of smells, heritage and historic paper

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Speaker 1: published in the journal Heritage Science, the authors argue the

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Speaker 1: importance of documenting and preserving smells, but why. The researchers

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Speaker 1: realize that visitors at St. Paul's Cathedral, Dean and Chapter

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Speaker 1: Library in London frequently comment on the aroma of the space,

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Speaker 1: saying they feel like they can smell history now thanks

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Speaker 1: to our limbic system. Odors can make us pretty emotional,

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Speaker 1: especially when they evoke memories. Sense affect how we experience

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Speaker 1: different cultures and places, and help us gain more insight

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Speaker 1: into and engage more deeply with the past. Since smells

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Speaker 1: are a part of our cultural heritage, the researchers pose

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Speaker 1: it they have historical value and deserve to be identified, analyzed,

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Speaker 1: and archived using chemical analysis and sensory descriptions. The study

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Speaker 1: authors set about figuring out a way for scientists and

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Speaker 1: historians to do so. In one experiment, the researchers asked

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Speaker 1: visitors at the historic library to characterize the odors they smelled.

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Speaker 1: More than seventy percent of respondents considered the library smell

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Speaker 1: as pleasant. All the visitors thought it smelled woody, while

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Speaker 1: eighty six percent noticed a smokey aroma. Earthy was seventy

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Speaker 1: one percent, and vanilla at fort were also descriptors visitors

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Speaker 1: chose often. Other responses ranged from musty to pungent and

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Speaker 1: floral to rancid mmm. In another experiment, the study authors

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Speaker 1: analyzed the responses of seventy nine visitors to the Birmingham

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Speaker 1: Museum and Art Gallery in the United Kingdom to the

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Speaker 1: smell of a historic book from a second hand bookstore.

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Speaker 1: To capture the book smell, a piece of sterile gauze

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Speaker 1: was soaked in five milli leaders or point one seven

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Speaker 1: ounces of an extract of the book odor and placed

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Speaker 1: in an unlabeled metal canister scrowge shut to prevent visitors

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Speaker 1: from peaking. The top three responses when the visitors were

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Speaker 1: prompted to describe the smell chocolate, coffee, and old. The

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Speaker 1: team even analyzed the volatile organic compounds also known as

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Speaker 1: v o c s in the book and in the library.

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Speaker 1: Most odors are composed of v o C s, or

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Speaker 1: chemicals that evaporate at low temperatures. V o C s

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Speaker 1: are often associated with certain smell types, like ascetic acid

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Speaker 1: with sour, for instance. Using the data from the chemical

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Speaker 1: analysis and visitors smell descriptions, the researchers created the Historic

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Speaker 1: Book Odor Wheel to document an archive the Historic Library

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Speaker 1: smell main categories such as sweet or spicy fill the

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Speaker 1: inner circle of the wheel. Descriptors such as caramel or

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Speaker 1: biscuits fill the middle, and the chemical compounds likely to

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Speaker 1: be the smelly source, like for for all, fill the

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Speaker 1: outer circle. The researchers want the Book Odor Wheel to

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Speaker 1: be an interdisciplinary tool that untrained noses can use to

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Speaker 1: identify smells and the compounds causing them, which could address

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Speaker 1: conservators concerns about material composition and degradation, inform artifact paper

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Speaker 1: conservation decisions, and benefit Ola Factory museum experiences. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: was written by Shelley Danzy, produced by Dylan Fagan, and

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Speaker 1: for more on this and other topics, please visit us

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Speaker 1: at how stup works dot com