Super sniffers.

• Position: SENSES - Brief article

Our eyes can see several million colors, and our ears can hear about 340,000 tones. But what about our noses? Scientists have long believed that we can discern only about 10,000 odors, but researchers at Rockefeller University in New York recently found that humans can detect more than a trillion different scents. In their experiment, 26 volunteers were given three sample scents--two identical and the third a random combination from 128 odor molecules, ranging from citrus to garlic to leather. Each volunteer...