Scientists say cut soot, methane to curb warming

FILE - In this June 15, 2005 photo, methane gas burns off a stack near the Washington Electric Cooperative power plant in Coventry, Vt. An international team of scientists say they've figured out how to slow global warming in the short run, prevent millions of deaths from dirty air and increase food production. And it will save more money than it will cost. They say the key is to reduce emissions of two other greenhouse gases instead of carbon dioxide. Those pollutants are methane and soot. Those powerful gases are fast acting so reducing them would pay off quickly. Soot also is a big health problem, so cutting it would save lives. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)

FILE - In this June 15, 2005 photo, methane gas burns off a stack near the Washington Electric Cooperative power plant in Coventry, Vt. An international team of scientists say they've figured out how to slow global warming in the short run, prevent millions of deaths from dirty air and increase food production. And it will save more money than it will cost. They say the key is to reduce emissions of two other greenhouse gases instead of carbon dioxide. Those pollutants are methane and soot. Those powerful gases are fast acting so reducing them would pay off quickly. Soot also is a big health problem, so cutting it would save lives. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)

FILE - In this June 25, 2007 file photo, a gas well recovering methane gas at a landfill in Ferris, Texas. An international team of scientists say they've figured out how to slow global warming in the short run, prevent millions of deaths from dirty air and increase food production. And it will save more money than it will cost. They say the key is to reduce emissions of two other greenhouse gases instead of carbon dioxide. Those pollutants are methane and soot. Those powerful gases are fast acting so reducing them would pay off quickly. Soot also is a big health problem, so cutting it would save lives. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam, File)

(AP) ? An international team of scientists says it has figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.

They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming ? methane and soot.

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.

Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal Science. Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.

Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 different existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot. The idea has been around for more than a decade and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive.

All 14 methods ? capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection ? are being used efficiently in many places, but are not universally adopted, said the study's lead author, Drew Shindell of NASA.

If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate that would reduce projected global warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) by the year 2050. Without the measures, global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) in the next four decades. But controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 1.3 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius). It also would increase annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tons (135 million metric tons).

Methane comes from landfills, farms, drilling for natural gas, and coal mining. Soot, called black carbon by scientists, is a byproduct of burning and is a big problem with cook stoves using wood, dung and coal in developing countries and in some diesel fuels worldwide.

Reducing methane and black carbon isn't the very best way to attack climate change, air pollution, or hunger, but reducing those chemicals are among the better ways and work simultaneously on all three problems, Shindell said.

And shifting the pollution focus does not mean ignoring carbon dioxide. Shindell said: "The science says you really have to start on carbon dioxide even now to get the benefit in the distant future."

It all comes down to basic chemistry. There is far more carbon dioxide pollution than methane and soot pollution, but the last two are much more potent. Carbon dioxide also lasts in the atmosphere longer.

A 2007 Stanford University study calculated that carbon dioxide was the No. 1 cause of man-made global warming, accounting for 48 percent of the problem. Soot was second with 16 percent of the warming and methane was right behind at 14 percent.

But over a 20-year period, a molecule of methane or soot causes substantially more warming then a carbon dioxide molecule.

The new research won wide praise from outside scientists, including a conservative researcher who held a top post in the George W. Bush administration.

"So rather than focusing only on carbon dioxide emissions, where we have to make a tradeoff with energy prices, this strategy focuses on 'win-win-win' pathways that have benefits to human health, agriculture and stabilizing the Earth's climate," said University of Minnesota ecology professor Jonathan Foley, who wasn't part of the study. "That's brilliant."

John D. Graham, who oversaw regulations at the Office of Management and Budget in the Bush administration and is now dean of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, said: "This is an important study that deserves serious consideration by policy makers as well as scientists."

The study even does a cost-benefit analysis to see if these pollution control methods are too expensive to be anything but fantasy. They actually pay off with benefits that are as much as ten times the value of the costs, Shindell said. The paper calculates that as of 2030, the pollution reduction methods would bring about $6.5 trillion in annual benefits from fewer people dying from air pollution, less global warming and increased crop production.

In the United States, Shindell calculates the measures would prevent about 14,000 air pollution deaths in people older than 30 by the year 2030. About 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit of projected warming in the U.S. would be prevented by 2050.

But health benefits would be far bigger in China and India where soot is more of a problem.

The study comes a day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the most detailed data yet on American greenhouse gas emissions. Of the emissions reported to the government, nearly three-quarters came from power plants. But with methane, it's different. Nineteen of the top 20 methane emitters were landfills.

Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who is a leader in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but wasn't part of this study, praised the study but said he worried that officials would delay cutting back on the more prevalent carbon dioxide. Focusing solely on methane and soot and ignoring carbon dioxide "tends to exacerbate climate change," he said.

Another outside climate expert Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada said the study is good news amid a sea of gloomy reports about climate change.

"This is a no-brainer," he said. "We have solutions at hand."

___

Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

NASA's interactive of benefits by nations: http://1.usa.gov/zqXdyJ

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2012-01-12-Warming%20Fix/id-e577823c07e04522bc1c36288d389011

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Recon Instruments touts SDK for GPS-enabled ski goggles, polar heart rate monitor compatibility in tow

Like clockwork, Recon Instruments is choosing CES once again to launch its next functionality improvement for those futuristic GPS-enabled ski goggles that we first saw in 2010. This year's revelation is the impending launch (May 2012, to be precise) of a software development kit for the Android-based MOD Live -- a little diddy we sat down with a few months back. Moreover, there's soon to be support with the Polar WearLink+ transmitter with Bluetooth. The MOD Live near-eye device enables skiers and riders to see a hodgepodge of instant (and useful) information, and with an SDK on the way, the amount of available data is sure to increase. We're told that the outfit's working with "strategic partners" to bring specific apps to the table, where users will see things like 2D graphics at up to 30fps, location / speed / altitude registers, time / jump analytics and free fall detection. Head on past the break for the full PR, and go ahead and book yourself a trip to the arctic in May; something tells us Whitefish, Montana's going to be mostly green by then.

Continue reading Recon Instruments touts SDK for GPS-enabled ski goggles, polar heart rate monitor compatibility in tow

Recon Instruments touts SDK for GPS-enabled ski goggles, polar heart rate monitor compatibility in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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slashgear: Sony Xperia S: 12MP, 720p display and NFC http://t.co/xfnKZYRE #tech #slashgear

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Analysis: EU faces defense challenge as U.S. looks to Asia (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? The European Union might appear a military superpower, at least on paper. It has more uniformed personnel than the United States and overall EU defense spending outstrips Russia or China.

But as Washington pulls troops back from the continent, two decades after the Cold War ended, and refocuses on Asia, the cash-strapped nations of Europe face uncomfortable truths over just how paltry their real military capabilities have become.

NATO's war in Libya last year was trumpeted as Europe starting to take responsibility for its own backyard, with Britain and France calling the shots while Washington "led from behind." In reality, the campaign was heavily dependent on U.S. military, technical, intelligence and logistical support - the Europeans could not even supply enough of their own munitions.

According to one security source, of more than 100 cruise missiles fired during the opening days of the campaign, only two were European, and even those were built in the United States -Tomahawks, fired from a British nuclear submarine.

For strategists in Washington focused on the need to cut some half a trillion dollars from their defense budget, Europe offers few threats and even fewer opportunities. This much has become clear in last week's announced U.S. strategy shift.

"SWITZERLAND WRIT LARGE"

While several European states provided at least a token military presence in support of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, they would be able to offer much less in the way of useful capabilities in any stand-off with China, Iran or North Korea.

In what some are calling the "Asian century," even the "special relationship" between the United States and its 20th-century Atlantic ally Britain looks much less relevant.

"The new U.S. strategy underlines the growing divergence between European and American strategic interests," said Nick Witney, a former head of the European Defense Agency and now a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"Europe is going to have to grow up and learn to take responsibility for its own security, without Uncle Sam to prod and cajole - or, more likely, decline into a strategic backwater... Switzerland writ large"

The U.S. pullback from Europe, of course, is not new. During the Cold War, Washington kept some 400,000 troops in Europe, facing off against the Soviet Union. Only some 80,000 remain and some analysts see that being halved again in the coming years.

Those U.S. bases likely to remain open in Europe - such as the giant air force facility at Ramstein in southwestern Germany or the major signals listening post at Menwith Hill in northern England - will be those most useful to Washington for global operations further afield, particularly in the Middle East.

"It's not as if the lights are going to go out completely on the U.S. presence in Europe," said Charles Kupchan, director for European affairs at Bill Clinton's National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But, he added: "The overall message is that Europe is going to need to start taking more care of its own defense, that they won't be able to call on the U.S. in the same way as the past."

The prospect of Europe making up the gap, however, seems remote to many.

MONEY NOT PROBLEM

According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total defense spending across Europe fell by 2.8 percent in 2010 as the financial crisis began to bite. A similar fall is expected to be recorded for 2011.

But Europe's defense weakness is clearly not just a matter of money or even personnel.

France, Britain, Germany and Italy remain in the top 10 global defense spenders. Total estimates of European Union defense and security spending vary between $200 and 300 billion, depending on what is included. That might be well under half that of the United States, but by some assessments it still outstrips both Russia and China combined.

China's official 2011 military budget was some $91 billion, although many analysts suspect the real figure could be much higher. Russia's 2011 defense budget was $53 billion.

According to the European Defense Agency and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2010 Europe had some 1.6 million full-time military personnel and as many as 5 million including reserve and paramilitary personnel -- more than the United States, the global military superpower.

The problem, critics say, is that Europe spends that cash and uses those personnel in an almost uniquely inefficient way.

"It's always been obvious what needs to be done - taking a more collective approach to Europe's security," said Kupchan. "But if anything, European countries have gone with the opposite approach."

Many of Europe's individual states, defense experts say, continue to use the sector as a way of bolstering national industry and employment rather than building true military capability that would be of use internationally.

Attempts at cooperation among European governments frequently flounder, with critics blaming mismanagement and political interference. Projects such as the British-German-Italian-Spanish Eurofighter or the A400M military transport aircraft ran billions over budget and suffered years of delays.

There have been attempts to solve the problem. In 2004, the European Union set up the European Defense Agency largely to provide coordination and avoid such issues. Critics say it has known mixed success at best, although supporters hope the U.S. drawdown could provide just the impetus it needs to thrive.

"What we are being told to do now is that we have to do our job," EDA chief executive Claude-France Arnould told Reuters. "We should go full speed ahead with pooling and sharing."

But solving those technical issues of policy coordination would only be a beginning. Most of the continent's military personnel, many analysts say, are effectively undeployable.

On paper, even after abolishing national service, Germany retains some 250,000 service personnel, and almost twice that many when reserves are included. Yet Berlin has struggled to provide a few thousand to support NATO in Afghanistan.

There is also the question of whether European voters are willing to back governments in international ventures.

"Contributing troops to these conflicts has been very financially and politically expensive for European countries," says Tomas Valasek, director of foreign policy and defense at the Center for European Reform.

"There will be some who will rejoice that the U.S. has in effect said that it plans to do fewer 'nationbuilding' wars."

Those who want to see a more activist European military approach must put their faith in the growing but still rocky alliance between Britain and France, showcased in Libya.

But insiders say that tandem between the traditional west European military powers is already showing many of the same problems of other European attempts at defense cooperation.

"There is" much talk about "smart defense, burden sharing and so forth but not much more," one senior British officer said on condition of anonymity. "But then, it is early days."

Some analysts believe the fledgling Franco-British alliance is already faltering amid obvious growing divisions between the two on other issues within the European Union, for example over financial regulation and the euro.

Britain is facing particular challenges of its own. Having spent the last decade focusing on supporting Washington in just the kind of wars the United States now wants to avoid, it is seen once again struggling to find a new geopolitical role.

"The UK in particular finds itself in an awkward and uncomfortable position," said Kupchan. "If the U.S. is going to reorientate itself toward Asia, then the special relationship with the UK loses much of its salience."

The former U.S. official said that this might be grounds for the British government under Prime Minister David Cameron to seek a closer relationship with European allies: "But Cameron's government seems to be taking the opposite approach," Kupchan said. "There is a risk that Britain may simply end up isolated."

WHAT THREAT?

Behind both the U.S. drawdown and Europe's questioning of its military future lies a simple truth - Europe faces fewer security threats than at any point in its history.

Eastern European states might be nervous over the U.S. withdrawal and still fear former overlord Moscow. But few serious strategists believe Russia represents any serious danger beyond perennial threats to cut off winter oil and gas supplies.

Some in Washington and elsewhere would like to see the Europeans taking a much more activist role in nearby parts of the Middle East. But after the mixed success of the Iraqi and Afghan interventions, many others are unconvinced that such actions would make the world a safer place.

Though it might still seem a distant prospect, some believe Europe's greatest threat may still come from within - the risk that financial crisis and economic hardship could fuel violent ambitions at home, as it did in the 1930s.

"If the economic crisis continues to deepen, you cannot exclude the possibility of autocratic, xenophobic or extremist regimes potentially coming to power in parts of Europe," said Valasek at the Center for European Reform in London.

"In that case, I think the U.S. would find itself getting involved in Europe once again."

If the coming decade is to be characterized by growing military build-up and confrontation in Asia, however, it is hard to see Europe taking a significant role.

In theory, British, French and other long-range European warships could deploy alongside their U.S. counterparts in any face-off with Beijing - but only in very small numbers that are unlikely to make any substantial strategic difference.

Yet that, some Europeans suggest, might not be an entirely bad thing for a continent that twice in the last century dragged the wider world into devastating global conflicts.

"If there were to be a serious military confrontation between the U.S. and China in the years to come, God forbid, the sidelines might be the most sensible place to be," says Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of the military expenditure project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"The new focus on Asia might pose challenges the Europe.

"But it also offers an opportunity for us to decide what we really want."

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Brussels)

(Reporting By Peter Apps; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120110/ts_nm/us_europe_defence

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1st ODI: Sri Lanka, South Africa get set to lock horns

Paarl:?The Big Picture

Before the Test series, the gulf in quality between the two sides seemed unbridgeable, though Sri Lanka went on to pull off one of the upsets of the decade in Durban before surrendering the series. In the one-day format, the teams are more evenly matched, as the rankings show - South Africa are third with 116 points, while Sri Lanka are fourth with 112. Also Sri Lanka's attack gets the cutting edge it lacked in the Tests with the return of Lasith Malinga, among the most feared bowlers in the limited-overs game.

While the bowling line-up of both teams is likely to be radically different from the Cape Town Test, South Africa have the added change of having a new full-time one-day captain. Graeme Smith's long reign having coming to an end, it is AB de Villiers who now takes the helm - an extra responsibility for someone who played as a specialist batsman two years ago. Now he has the MS Dhoni-like role of being captain, key batsman and wicketkeeper.

The other captain will also be under pressure, with both runs and wins proving elusive. Tillakaratne Dilshan is yet to win either a Test or major one-day series since taking over after the World Cup, and murmurs over him being replaced will only get louder if there is another mis-step this series.

Both sides have been in indifferent form in recent one-dayers. South Africa lost their only one-day series since the World Cup, going down to Australia, while Sri Lanka have failed in all their series against major opposition in that period.

Form guide
(Most recent first)

South Africa LWLLW
Sri Lanka LLLWL

Watch out for...
2011 was Lasith Malinga's most productive year in one-dayers so far. He topped the charts with 48 wickets, including two hat-tricks and three five-wicket hauls. On what is likely to be a batsman's track, against a formidable South African top order, Malinga's grab bag of tricks could prove pivotal to the outcome.

JP Duminy has been out of the Test side for nearly a year now, but remains an integral part of the South African one-day outfit. His ability to bat at several gears makes him a valuable part of the middle order, while his part-time offspin lends balance. His razor-sharp fielding is an added bonus.

Team news

de Villiers hinted that Wayne Parnell would miss out and that South Africa will consider two spinners for the game.

South Africa: (probable) 1 Graeme Smith, 2 Hashim Amla, 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 AB de Villiers (capt & wk), 5 JP Duminy, 6 Faf du Plessis 7 Albie Morkel, 8 Johan Botha, 9 Robin Peterson, 10 Dale Steyn, 11 Lonwabo Tsotsobe / Morne Morkel

The Sri Lanka top six all pick themselves, while the bowling could be very different from the Cape Town Test. Malinga is a certainty, Dilhara Fernando is fit after a knee problem that kept him out of the final Test, while Nuwan Kulasekara and Ajantha Mendis are also expected to play.

Sri Lanka: (probable) 1 Tillakaratne Dilshan (capt), 2 Upul Tharanga, 3 Kumar Sangakkara (wk), 4 Dinesh Chandimal, 5 Mahela Jayawardene, 6 Angelo Mathews, 7 Thisara Perera / Kosala Kulasekara, 8 Nuwan Kulasekara, 9 Lasith Malinga, 10 Dilhara Fernando, 11 Ajantha Mendis

Pitch and conditions

Slow and low is the usual character of the Paarl pitch. Rory Kleinveldt, the local lad, said that he expects 280 or 290 to be a good first-innings score. It's going to be scorching day, with the temperature set to peak at 35 degrees.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ndtv/qJNd/~3/ER6v2GwM5IA/183795-1st-odi-sri-lanka-south-africa-get-set-to-lock-horns

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Learning to speak 'the language of flavor'

Can you describe the flavor of the last thing you ate? Not whether or not you liked it, but the sensation of eating it. Chances are, it's difficult to do so in much detail. And when you do manage to put the flavor into words, you may wonder how well others would understand what you are saying.

That's because flavor suffers from a language problem.

"In our culture, and in most cultures, we teach our kids to discriminate sounds and colors, we work really hard at that," said Hildegarde Heymann, a sensory scientist at the University of California, Davis. "We very rarely tell kids what things taste and smell like ? we may tell them it tastes good or tastes bad."

"I may tell you this is really yummy, it tastes just like my grandma's apple pie; (but) my grandma may have used cinnamon and your grandma may have used cardamom and they are totally different apple pies, but we don?t go into that. We don't teach people to pay attention to their noses," she said.

Heymann's lab looks into questions about flavor often in wines, such as, how do wine and chocolate affect each other's flavors, or how do cabernet wines from Washington state compare with those from California, for instance. These questions can't be answered with "like" or "dislike." Instead, volunteers learn to pay attention to their noses and communicate what they experience. And the aromas they hone in on aren't always fruity, floral or pleasant sounding. ?

What is it?
Flavor is a single word that covers a lot of ground. The flavor we perceive arises not only from taste and aroma, but also the physical sensation food creates in your mouth. It's influenced by the appearance of what you're consuming, even the sound it makes as you chew.

Taste and smell may seem closely related, but in fact they are quite separate. Receptors on the taste buds of your tongue pick up taste, which comes in five distinct categories: sweet, salty, sour, bitter or umami (or savory). (Although some argue there are more.) An aroma, meanwhile, originates when receptors in our nose pick up volatile chemicals ? those that evaporate easily ? released by a substance into the air.

The two seem linked because aroma is picked up from the mouth when volatile compounds travel from the back of the mouth into the nose. Your saliva, the warmth of your mouth and the act of chewing all enhance the aromas that travel from the back of your mouth into your nose. As a result, it's easy to confuse the aroma for taste.

Learning to speak flavor
Heymann and her team often work with wine, and to get around the language problem, they frequently use a technique called Descriptive Analysis.

They assemble a panel of at least eight people, a large enough group to compensate for individual taste differences, and a panel leader guides them in creating their own vocabulary to describe the aromas in the wines or other samples they are given.

"We tend to do it by having the panel tell us what is going on and that is really like learning to speak language as a child," Heymann said.

After deciding upon the aromas they detect in the wines, the panelists each evaluate them. Other characteristics, primarily taste and mouth feel, require much less work before they are evaluated, because they come only in limited varieties.

To compare a set of 18 wines, say, the complete process would typically take five weeks.

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During the training sessions, the panelists taste (then spit out) various wines, They come up with words to describe the taste differences between the wines. The panel leader must help them winnow down these descriptors, figuring out how to describe a characteristic someone describes as strawberries, and someone else describes as red berries, and someone else describes in yet another way.

This process isn't about liking or disliking; the panelists must objectively describe what they perceive.

The panel leader, a role often played by Helene Hopfer, a postdoctoral researcher in Heymann's group, brings in reference standards ? actual items, sometimes floating in wine ? to help the panelists agree on what they are smelling.

Setting the standards
When I visited the lab in December, Hopfer presented me with several such references in black wine glasses to prevent biases that might be prompted by the sight of whatever is floating in them.

"Swirl the glass a bit, then you take a sniff and you try to think what it might be," Hopfer instructed. "It gets easier the more often you do it."

The odor was, well, naggingly familiar, acidic and beyond that, very difficult to describe. A peek inside revealed peas and slices of green bell pepper floating in red wine. (When possible, the references are presented in a bland wine because the wine itself can affect the flavor.)?

"If you would be on my panel you would say 'I smell bell pepper,' and I would give you three or four different versions of a bell pepper: a fresh bell pepper, a frozen bell pepper, a red bell pepper, and then you would say 'That one is not the one I am looking for, that one is pretty close,'" Hopfer explained.

After the group has agreed upon the aromas for the items floating in the wines, each member will evaluate the wines themselves (sans any peppers or strawberries floating in them) for the aromas, tastes, mouth feel and other characteristics, depending on the nature of the question they are exploring.

Mouth feel ? like the heat associated with alcohol or the dry feeling that arises from something astringent ? is perceived through a different neural pathway than aroma or taste.

For the final evaluation, the panelists go into tasting booths, where they rank each attribute for each wine on a sliding scale. They do this one wine at a time, taking breaks between wines and cleaning their palates with water or crackers. Here too, they must spit.

The data they generate is analyzed statistically and related to data on the chemistry of the flavors.

A matter of taste
The panelists are often students from the viticulture (grape-growing), enology (study of wine) or food science departments at Davis. The first panel that Arielle Johnson, a graduate student studying flavor chemistry, participated in explored the effects of wine and chocolate on one another.

She found it intimidating at first.

"I had never done one before, and I was in a room with a lot of people who had been doing this for a long time," Johnson said. "But it was really interesting, sort of paying attention that closely to all the things I could smell in the wines and listening to all the things other people had to say, and then going back and seeing if I could get the same thing,"

While menus and liquor-store labels describe their wares in floral, fruity-type terms, wines can also bring to mind diesel, rubber, a barnyard and other less conventional aromas. In small amounts, these can add complexity to a wine, in larger amounts, they are often considered defects. But even then, some people are still drawn to them.

"There are people who are like, 'Oh, ashtray, I love it,'" Hopfer said. "I really have a problem with 'This is a good wine,' and 'That is a bad wine.'"

During the wine and chocolate panel, someone detected a particularly memorable aroma: Fecal.

"The proponent of fecal was saying, 'Well, actually, I kind of like a little bit of it,' and everyone else was saying, 'You can't call it fecal, it doesn't smell fecal,'" said Johnson, who did not personally pick up on that aroma, which was eventually voted down, she said: "I think we put something dirt or strawlike."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45928511/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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FreshNews_Ghana: KEEA gets a new community library http://t.co/LYYJv1kW

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