Putting your hand up to your face and taking a quick sniff as you breathe out is a common way to check if your breath stinks. But it isn't accurate enough for University of Tel Aviv microbiologist Mel Rosenberg and his colleague Nir Sterer, who have developed a disposable breath-tester the size of a pack of gum called OkayToKiss.
The tester, which could be on the market within a year, requires users to dab a little spit into a small window that changes colour in the presence of high levels of the sugar-digesting enzymes used by bacteria that can cause bad breath.
The remedy, if you are away from home, is to vigorously chew sugar-free gum for three minutes, says Dr. Rosenberg, co-editor of the new Journal of Breath Research.
The Canadian-born Dr. Rosenberg, who moved to Israel 40 years ago, has also developed a mouthwash called Dentyl pH that uses oil droplets to trap debris and bacteria. It is not yet available in North America, but is sold in Britain.
He also has a new website, http://www.smellwell.com, that offers information on bad breath, body odour and stinky shoes (he says putting them in the freezer doesn't work).
Oceans speak volumes
Sound spreads widely in the world's oceans, and the clamour of human activity reaches every cove, says Jesse Ausubel, director of the Human Environment program at Rockefeller University in Manhattan.
Motors and propellers are noisy; so are jet skis and oil-and-gas exploration. In fact, we make the oceans three decibels noisier each decade, he says.
In a convocation address this week at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Dr. Ausubel proposed turning down the volume for four hours in an international Quiet Ocean Experiment. That would be enough time for thousands of researchers around the world to see how sea creatures respond to pre-industrial noise levels, he says.
Would whales, for example, change the frequencies they use to communicate? "If we can quiet things down, would they return to their normal, natural frequency rather than deepening their voices or raising their voices?" he said an interview.
Dr. Ausubel has experience with ambitious, large-scale scientific projects. He played an important role in creating the Encyclopedia of Life, an online catalogue of the species on Earth, and was also involved in establishing the Census for Marine Life, an international program to chart life in the oceans by 2010.
Scientists from around the world who are interested in his Quiet Ocean Experiment will get together for their first meeting before the end of the year.
Dr. Ausubel acknowledges how difficult it will be to get four noise-free hours. Navies and the world's maritime industries would have to be on board. "Maybe the time to do it would be Christmas Day," he says. "We would like to inconvenience people as little as possible."
I know you
New research bolsters the claims of people who say they never forget a face.
A team of scientists is reporting that a small percentage of people are "super-recognizers," who score far higher than average on standard face-recognition tests.
"They recognize a person who was shopping in the same store with them two months ago, for example, even if they didn't speak with them," says Richard Russell, a postdoctoral researcher at the department of psychology at Harvard.
One woman in the study said she once identified a waitress who had served her five years earlier.
Word masters
People who speak two languages are better at picking up a third one, even if it is very different from the two they already know, a study has found.
Viorica Marian, a researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois, asked 60 student volunteers to master words in an invented language.
The volunteers who had spoken either Mandarin or Spanish as well as English since early childhood learned twice as many words as those who spoke only a single language.
"Our research tells us that children who grow up with two languages wind up being better language-learners later on," Dr. Marian says.
Anne McIlroy is The Globe and Mail's science reporter.