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By Leonie Schittenhelm

Research, my dear readers, is hard. It just is. Some parts are hard because no one has ever done them before, some other parts are hard because everyone constantly does them but they still won’t work in your hands. Sometimes things are hard because you’re dependent on other people, but they’re really really busy right now, and some other things are hard because you spend too much time on your own, staring into the depths of your data analysis. There’s a million different things that can be hard, and they might be very specific to your research. Luckily for all of us, the things that make the hard stuff a bit easier actually seem pretty universal: Eat right, sleep right and don’t forget to hang out with the people you love. While those are clearly the most important to stay healthy and resilient even in the face of adversity, here are some other ideas what to do when you get into a rut about your research.

1. Pet something fluffy – I know having pets isn’t always feasible for busy PhD students, but that doesn’t mean you can’t visit that friend with a cat more than all of your other friends. And if you’re too shy to ask complete strangers in the park if you could possibly cuddle their dog for a tiny bit, maybe this video about fluffy robot seals will cheer you up a bit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-WTCm7kOP0
2. Get out into nature – especially after spending a couple of days in a darkened room with a microscope, there is nothing better than having a sandwich in the sunshine, with some birds chirping in the background. And why not take advantage of Newcastle’s unique location and take the metro to the beach after a long day in the lab?
3. Change your point of view – Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery. Need to do a lot of reading but have been stuck in the office all week? Maybe take your computer to one of the libraries around campus or work in a coffee shop for a couple of hours. The same applies to all other points of view: speaking to people outside of science or even just outside of your field can provide some much-needed perspective.
4. Volunteer – Okay, this is a hard one – I mean, who has the time? But sometimes, it helps to have a reminder of who your research is actually for. A friend of mine researches Alzheimers disease and her biweekly board game nights with some residents of an old peoples home is just the thing to get her inspired again – maybe there’s something you always wanted to try?
5. Take care of each other – Not surprising, but the people you do your PhD alongside with can provide a huge amount of understanding and support. Because who understands the struggles of being a researcher better than another researcher, right? But for this support system to work and not be a source of even more stress, you actually need to put in some work as well – being honest about your own daily struggles, encouraging each other to be healthy and take well-deserved breaks and not engaging in the one-upping culture of who worked the most hours this week can go a long way.

Do you have any more ideas for stress relief that you want to share? Let us know in the comments!

By Leonie Schittenhelm

The days grow longer, the sun gets warmer and Easter is just around the corner – while it is not quite T-shirt weather in the Northeast just yet, it surely can’t be much longer off now? A girl can dream. Then again, there’s surely one thing I don’t miss about the sure to come summer heatwave – sitting in public transport, the air heavy with a mix of more or less unpleasant body odours. But have you ever though how to specifically describe these types of smells?

This is what Dr. Caroline Allen, who works at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University tries to find out. Working together with collaborators from the UK and the Czech Republic, as well as the expert noses of 4 perfumers, she tried to work out how to find the words to correctly describe human body odour. Why is that important? Because odour is made up of a lot of different components, which – if correctly identified – can potentially tell us a lot about the health, fertility and even genetic make-up of the smelly person in question. However, most research on odours so far asked participants to rate odours on simple one trait scales, such as attractiveness of the smell or how likely it is to belong to a woman or a man. While useful, these don’t even come close to describing the complexity of the smell of another human being, which is where Dr. Allens research comes in.

Kind volunteers collected their body odours by wearing a pad under their armpits for 24 hours before trained perfumers and fragrance evaluators got together to agree on a primary lexicon of 15 smells that were commonly included in these samples. Personal highlights hereby included ‘Onion’ and ‘ChipFat’, but also terms such as ‘Milky’, ‘Metallic’ or ‘Vegetable’. They then used this newly built lexicon of smells to describe body odours they hadn’t smelled before, to test the validity of the words chosen. Interestingly, while the perfumers could not distinguish female and male body odour reliably, they used the descriptors ‘Animalic/Spicy’ preferentially for male samples, while female samples were often associated with the descriptors of ‘Milky/Sweet’. Although this lexicon holds exciting opportunities for the odour research community, I would probably still veer away from it in public transport – I’m sure no one would really appreciate you pointing out their ‘Moldy Animalic ChipFat’-type of smell…

If you want to check out this brilliant science story for yourself:
Allen, C., J. Havlíček, K. Williams, and S. C. Roberts. “Perfume experts’ perceptions of body odors: Toward a new lexicon for body odor description.” Journal of Sensory Studies (2018).