Fascinating read in American Scientist (sub required)
“Detecting and classifying odors can be extremely useful. When it comes to food, odors can signal freshness, fermentation levels, even the authenticity of products. Odors help with pollution monitoring, the detection of land mines and other explosives, even the medical diagnostics of breath samples. But it’s not always feasible to use trained human sniffers to get these jobs done. David R. Walt, Shannon E. Stitzel and Matthew J. Aernecke describe the technology behind electronic noses and what they are capable of.”
Photo: Working by scent alone, a hunting dog is able to track the path of a stuffed pheasant. The animals were in darkness until the dog found the pheasant. The path of the dog (red) and the pheasant (yellow) are shown in this time-lapse photograph. It’s not an easy task to quantify a scent or measure it in a visible manner, but researchers have been making great strides with artificial-nose systems that they hope will accomplish these goals. They have taken inspiration from the adaptability of mammalian olfaction, including the canine system, in developing odor-sensing devices that can identify scents based on the unique pattern of responses they generate in an array of sensors.
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