The Sweet Smell of Success: Those smells that waft out of Cinnabon and other aromatic food and retail establishments are no accident. They're actually a deliberate attempt to draw customers in — and there's a name for the thinking behind them: scent marketing. "The battle for noses is getting intense," the Wall Street Journal reports. "Restaurants are adjusting recipes to make aromas more concentrated and pleasant." They're also enlisting other scent strategies: For instance, Cinnabon puts its ovens near the front of the store to maximize the smell of fresh-baked buns; moving them to the back, as an experiment, "significantly" lowered sales. That's nothing to sniff at. [ The Wall Street Journal]

Bring on the Bubbly: You may not ever have thought to wonder how many bubbles there are in a glass of champagne, but French scientist Gérard Liger-Belair, who, as the author of Uncorked: The Science of Champagne, tends to look much deeper into his flute than the rest of us, has popped the cork on that question and found an answer: about 1 million. Liger-Belair reached that conclusion after conducting a study "based on theoretical models combining ascending bubble dynamics and mass transfer equations," published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. The specific number of bubbles may vary, he notes, based on variables like the wine, the glass and the temperature. Which explains what happens when you open a warm bottle of the sparkly stuff. [ Journal of Physical Chemistry via The New York Times]

Beyond the Styrofoam Cooler: Speaking of warm beverages, the Japanese company Takara Tomy A.R.T.S is introducing a new product that will cool your unchilled can of beer to the highly drinkable temperature of 39-42 degrees F at the press of a button, in only four minutes. (Sure, you could just put the thing on ice, but where's the fun in that?) The Premium Beer Server GOKUREI, which retails for $76.55, also allows you to serve your beer in a glass with a press of a lever — and control the ratio of brew to froth. And since it's battery-operated and weighs only 1.5 pounds, it's designed to be portable. Did someone say "picnic"? [ RocketNews24]

In Other Food News: In a vote that has attracted national attention, the residents of a county in agriculture-heavy southwest Oregon have voted to ban genetically engineered crops from the area. [ Associated Press]