Its spicy tang floods the air, mixing with the scent of roasted nuts being stirred by an elderly woman and the sweetly rotting smell of a spiky durian fruit being cut with a hatchet.

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He finally won the Academy Award in 1992 for his role as Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman, after seven previous nominations - including one for best supporting actor the same year.

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It was not until 2001, however, that Manfred Milinski and Claus Wedekind of the University of Bern wondered whether there was a correlation between the perfume a woman preferred and her own natural scent.

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