Sweet smell of science

Kansas City Star: Two U.S. scientists haven't saved lives or cured diseases with the discovery that won them the Nobel Prize for medicine this week.
Still, their research is nothing to sniff at.
The research is, in fact, about sniffing. Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel pieced together the mystery of how humans recognize individual scents, and how those scents trigger memories of distant times and places.
Smell has long been recognized as one of the five basic senses, but scientists never understood its basic principles. Axel and Buck in 1991 reported their discovery of a large family of genes devoted to producing odor-sensing receptors.
Next time you take a whiff of your morning coffee, consider that a mix of molecules is flowing over the receptors in the back of your nose. Your brain will note which receptors are activated by those particular molecules, and will interpret that pattern as a smell. The brain uses the pattern of receptors to form memories of approximately 10,000 odors.
Taste
The work of Axel and Buck has become an essential chapter in neuroscience textbooks. Researchers have discovered that other sensory systems, including taste, operate in a similar fashion.
Buck, of Seattle, and Axel, of New York, are two of five Americans to win Nobel Prizes this week. Scientists David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek received the award for physics for their work in expanding understanding of the forces that bind together the smallest pieces of matter, known as quarks.
The prizes are a happy reminder that the nation must continue to invest in science.