Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

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To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.j.p. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Talata. Got a minute?

Ever lose your ability to taste during a cold because your nose is stuffed up?

That's because the nose is intimately involved with taste.

And when you chew, volatile flavor compounds from the food get lofted up toward the back of the mouth.

And when you exhale, you carry some of those

flavor compounds up into your nasal cavity, where they hit olfactory receptors. As children, we basically

learn the first lesson in the table manners, you know, just to keep the mouth closed while chewing,

and you also want to breathe smoothly. It's Ray Ney, a mechanical engineer at Penn State.

I think this is not only because it's courteous, but also because it actually can smell

the food much better if you can breathe smoothly.

The back door by which smell contributes to taste is called retronasal olfaction, and it turns

out our airways are exquisitely tuned to enhance that effect.

Ney and his colleagues 3D printed a model of a woman's airway, using a CT scan as a template.

To track airflow, they laced water with fluorescent particles and pumped it through the apparatus, filming the results.

They found that when you breathe in, that inward airflow actually forms a curtain at the back of your

mouth, blocking food particles from getting into the lungs, which is a good thing. And when you exhale,

air swirls through that cavity in the back of the mouth, sweeping up those volatile particles

...