It’s a staple of science fact and factoid that no instrument can equal a person’s nose and sense of smell – not to mention a dog’s much better version – at detecting and identifying trace chemicals floating in the air. But in an enterprising and engaging, not to mention important, piece at the Globe Carolyn Y. Johnson reports that artificial noses are closing the gap.

She starts it off with a couple of grafs with rat-a-tat listings of artificial noses and their abilities already, then turns for a localized focus on one nearby company’s automated sniffer and identifier machine. Hopes to add hyper-smelling machines to cancer diagnostics take a turn. And she winds it up saying for all that, biomimicry is still well behind the real thing or, as one company officer says, it would be better to have a “full-blown dog nose in a box.”

PIc source (Just a toy. Dunno if it can smell) ;

Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.