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Recent research on Émile Zola's involvement with the French press of the late Second Empire and early Third Republic has clarified the shape of this history of his engagement with journalism, including a supposed absence from the fray between 1881 and 1895. This article, however, identifies in the period 1888 to 1892, between the idealism of Le Rêve and the reflexivity of Le Docteur Pascal, a period of particular reflection on the press by Zola which illuminates 'le retour du réel et de l'actualité' in his novels: La Bête humaine, L'Argent and La Débâcle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smell is often regarded as an ancillary perception in primates, who seem so dominated by their sense of vision. In this paper, we will portray some aspects of the significance of olfaction to human life and speculate on what evolutionary factors contribute to keeping it alive. We then outline the functional architecture of olfactory sensory neurons and their signal transduction pathways, which are the primary detectors that render olfactory perception possible. Throughout the phylogenetic tree, olfactory neurons, at their apical tip, are either decorated with cilia or with microvilli. The significance of this dichotomy is unknown. It is generally assumed that mammalian olfactory neurons are of the ciliary type only. The existance of so-called olfactory microvillar cells in mammals, however, is well documented, but their nature remains unclear and their function orphaned. This paper discusses the possibility, that in the main olfactory epithelium of mammals ciliated and microvillar sensory cells exist concurrently. We review evidence related to this hypothesis and ask, what function olfactory microvillar cells might have and what signalling mechanisms they use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]