Tweaking The Nose (Smell / Olfactory Simulation & Stimulation)

[Anonymous]

KIRKHAM, England (Reuters) -- Ordinary smells, Dale Air can do -- but the breath of a Tyrannosaurus Rex?

"Where do you start?" asked Frank Knight, director of this small British firm which specializes in "themed aromas."

Most of the smells it creates, like "Granny's Kitchen" or "Burnt Wood," are designed to enhance museum visits or call up long-lost memories.

Re-creating the breath of a T-Rex for a huge model dinosaur in London's Natural History Museum posed challenges all of their own.

"We spoke to palaeontologists, who gave us a description of the dinosaur. Basically the bigger the creature the smellier they were," said Knight, who is passionate about accuracy.

"The dinosaurs would have had open sores from fighting, and rotting meat stuck in the gaps between their teeth.

"We needed all these features in the eventual odor," he said.

T-Rex breath turned out so accurate and so revolting, the curators instead opted for a milder swamp smell to evoke the creature's natural habitat.

Requests for nasty smells come in quite a lot, requiring some unpleasant research.

"I've had otter poo on my desk," said Knight, who created the odor for a zoo's nature trail, alongside the smell of jaguar urine and rotting flesh.

Some jobs are easier on the nose. Dale Air has supplied branches of British travel agent chain Lunn Poly with the scent of coconut oil, aimed at increasing the time customers spend in their stores.

Dale Air started life as an air-freshener firm. Then founder Fred Dale, who died earlier this year, found a lucrative sideline.

He was invited to mix familiar odors from the 1920s for use in old peoples' homes. These triggered memories and encouraged conversation among elderly residents.

Dale never looked back.

Soon museums were commissioning smells such as Dead Roman Soldier's Armpit and Viking Loo.

Potions
"My mum used to say that she never knew who she would be going to bed with -- a horse, or a bear ... as the smells used to linger on my dad's skin," said Fred's son, Robert.

Fred Dale's favorite project was the Jorvik Center museum in York which opened in 1984, boasting Viking smells as its key attraction. Authentic historical smells have since become a much copied feature.

Sarah Maltby, head of visitor attractions at Jorvik, said: "Competition is such nowadays you have to think how you can capture the imagination of your visitors, and thinking of how to capture all the senses is one of the things you have to do."

Dale Air's most expensive smell to date is frankincense, mixed for a Queen of Sheba exhibition at the British museum. A kilo of the scent lasting for a year cost £150 (5).

The firm's team of perfumers identified the chemical components of the smell and mixed up a replica potion.

Most aromas are supplied as liquids and pumped out through various dispensers. A new model still being tested can fill a 250-seat theater.

Knight thinks cinemas may also one day waft appropriate scents through the auditorium, but said they should be cautious.

Perfectionists
"You've got to give people choice. We don't like forcing aromas on people -- and you don't want people going to the cinema and not knowing what they'll encounter."

However, people can use their sense of smell to their advantage and there are some interesting applications.

The firm is testing an aroma dispenser which plugs into a computer and is controlled from the keyboard.

"Say you've got help desk staff who are getting tense and frustrated -- they can press a button to get an aroma to help calm them down," Knight said.

Most of the firm's smells, such as the "aromas of football" set, are for pure entertainment.

"Footie Pitch" smells of grass, "Trophy Room" smells of wood polish, "Half Time" smells of pies, and "Changing Room" smells of liniment, giving the over-zealous football fan or club shop an authentic whiff of the beautiful game.

Knight points out that football pitches are rarely mown the day of a match, so the smell of freshly cut grass will not do.

"That's how realistic we are -- we find out when they cut the grass."

Can anyone think of any other important smells we might synthesize?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/27/britain.smells.reut/index.html

 

[ArthurASCII]

The dinosaurs would have had open sores from fighting, and rotting meat stuck in the gaps between their teeth.

A bold assumption, but it sounds a bit romantic.
Who would a Trex be constantly fighting that would leave these sores?
And why would there be rotting flesh between it's teeth? There are still plenty of carnivores around today, and they seem to manage their dental hygiene ok.

 

[escargot]

Large reptiles can give a 'septic bite'.

Komodo dragons have special recesses in their front teeth which trap bits of meat. The meat goes off and although it doesn't harm the dragon, if the dragon bites another animal it causes an infection which makes the prey ill. The dragon then follows it for a day or two as it succumbs to its infection and eventually catches up with it and eats it.

The septic bite is the reason that all animal bites should be treated as potentially dangerously infected. Bites from non-poisonous snakes can be infected for example.

This is another sound reason for not dangling babies over crocodiles.

 

[carole]

Re: Re: Otter Poo and Dead Roman Soldier's Armpit

A bold assumption, but it sounds a bit romantic.
Who would a Trex be constantly fighting that would leave these sores?

Love bites, perhaps?

Carole

 

[carole]

I remember the Jorvik pongs well.

The ones that got to my stomach were those in Eden Camp (an old POW camp which has been turned into a WWII museum), one of the exhibits was of a U-Boat and the combined smell of Kriegsemarine BO and German sausages in the pantry were just too much for me . . .:cross eye

Carole

 

[fluffle9]

Re: Re: Otter Poo and Dead Roman Soldier's Armpit

There are still plenty of carnivores around today, and they seem to manage their dental hygiene ok.

err, have you ever been near a dog? their breath reeks. :cross eye

 

[Anonymous]

I read somewhere that one reason crocodiles die of "old age" is that they actually get such bad dental problems they either get blood poisoning from the decay, or they can no longer hunt well enough to feed themselves and starve. So it's not "old age" it's "bad teeth"

 

[ramonmercado]

What the nose knows

Mar 9th 2006
From The Economist print edition


Smell technology: Technology can manipulate and reproduce sight and sound with amazing fidelity. But what about smell?


WHEN it comes to reproducing sights and sounds, technology has made great strides in the past century. It is now possible to buy a high-definition television that produces an image almost indistinguishable from an aquarium or the view through a picture window; the best surround-sound systems can reproduce a concert performance so that it sounds just as it did in real life. While technologists have concentrated on sight and sound, however, smell has been left behind. Perhaps that is not surprising, since smell is, for most people, of lesser importance. But sometimes smell can provide information that other senses cannot. And that potentially opens the door to a range of new technologies.

For decades, scientists have been interested in imitating the way in which the nose detects compounds. Devices that do so are usually called artificial or electronic noses, says Vivek Subramanian, an engineer at the University of California in Berkeley. He has developed a new type of electronic nose that can, among other things, tell when wine has gone stale. The advantage of an electronic nose is that it is far more efficient and versatile than traditional chemical sensors. Developing a sensor to detect a single chemical substance is expensive, says Dr Subramanian, and such sensors then cannot be used to detect anything else. It is as if you had invented a camera that can take pictures only of red objects, or a microphone that picks up words only if they are spoken in French. But a general-purpose electronic nose can be used for all sorts of things, from sniffing food for quality control to detectingexplosives at airports.


The inspiration for such general-purpose devices is the human nose itself. Rather than recognising individual chemicals, each of its 300-400 different types of receptor responds to a wide range of volatile compounds. Across the tens of millions of cells that make up the human olfactory system, recognition of a smell appears to emerge from the combination of many such responses, much as the recognition of a face depends on identification of many different characteristics. This distributed approach enables the olfactory system to detect tens of thousands of smells without having to have tens of thousands of different types of receptor.

Today's electronic noses consist of an array of a dozen or so polymer films, each of a slightly different type. The electrical conductivity of these films varies in the presence of different chemicals, so that when the array of films is exposed to a particular odour, the different films respond in a characteristic way.

Dr Subramanian's electronic nose, however, takes a different approach. Instead of polymer films, it uses an array of transistors made out of various organic semiconductor materials. Transistors are ideal for sensing, he says, because they are highly sensitive to very slight changes in charge structure and bond structure, both of which can be induced by bringing them into contact with other compounds. Transistors made of different materials respond differently to differentchemicals, so that the array produces a distinctive signal when exposed to an odour. A sensor based on an array of five types of organictransistor is capable of distinguishing between unspoiled and oxidised wine.

Dr Subramanian's new nose is unusual not only in how it works, but also in how it is made. Organic semiconductors can be printed using special inkjet printers, which greatly reduces their cost. This could slash the price of electronic noses from hundreds to just a few dollars. Indeed, Dr Subramanian believes that electronic noses will eventually be so cheap that they will be built into food containers and pharmaceutical packaging, to indicate when a product is past its best. For this to happen, however, the price will have to fall below $1, which is unlikely for at least five years, he says.

Even when cheapsensors do become available, detecting compounds is only half the problem. As with a natural olfactory system, electronic noses must be able to learn and later recognise new smells. Ritaban Dutta at Warwick University in Britain has developed software that can recognise the smell of bacteria, including the deadly superbug MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). The project began when his collaborator, David Morgan, who is a surgeon at the Heart of England Hospital in Birmingham, noticed the distinctly different smells given off by abscessesduring surgery. He wondered if a machine could be trained to tell these different smells apart.

Armed with a traditional polymer-based electronic nose of the kind used by the food industry to detect rotteningredients, Dr Dutta trained his software to recognise MRSA by exposing it to samples of the bacteria. This was more difficult than it sounds, since the relative concentrations of the various compounds that correspond to a particular odour can vary from one sample to another. But when it was tested on 150 known samples, the resulting system was able to identify MRSA correctly 96% of the time. Dr Dutta is now seeking backing to extend his system so that it can also detect other dangerous bacteria, such as those that cause Legionnaire'sdisease. It might ultimately be possible to install sensors in hospital ventilation systems, he says, to prevent the spread of infections.

Michael Phillips of Menssana Research in Fort Lee, New Jersey, has gone one step further by developing a breathalyser that can detect lung cancer. “We can pick it up very early,” says Dr Phillips. His invention, called the Breath Collection Apparatus, has already been approved by America's medical regulator, the Food andDrug Administration, for detecting the early signs of heart-transplant rejection, and he believes it can also be used to detect breastcancer and tuberculosis.

The trick is to get a big sample of breath, says Dr Phillips. The patient breathes into the device for two minutes and an absorbent trap captures volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are found in the bloodstream and pass into the breath in minute quantities. The levels of VOCs are then measured using gas chromatography, and compared with those in a sample of ambient air taken at the same time. The system can detect very minute concentrations of VOCs—as low as a few parts per trillion. A pilot study found that the presence of a combination of 22 VOCs was an accurate indication of lung cancer, and a larger study is now under way. In the first stages of lung cancer, patients have an 80% chance of surviving for another five years, compared with a 5% chance when at stage four, says Dr Phillips. “We can detect lung cancer at stage one,” he says.

So much for devices that detect smells; what about systems that emit them? These turn out to have therapeutic uses, such as in the treatment of war veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Skip Rizzo, a psychologist at the Institute of Creative Technology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has been using virtual reality, in the form of video games, to treat PTSD. The idea is gradually to reintroduce the patient to the environment that caused thestress and trauma in the first place, steadily increasing the realism of the experience until it no longer causes them suffering, he says.

To make the treatment even more realistic, Dr Rizzo has taken to using a box of tricks that squirts out a range of odours, including the smells ofcordite, diesel, body odour, gunpowderand even rubbish, intended to make soldiersfeel as though they are back in Iraq. It is an old but effective trick: real-estate agents often recommend making coffee before potential buyers visit a home, because the smell makes them feel relaxed and at ease. Similarly, shopping centres often have cookie shops, which pump out warm chocolatey smells. “The olfactory system is linked to the limbic system, which controls memory,” says Dr Rizzo, and that explains why such tricks are so effective.



Towards smellyvision
These smell boxes are remarkably simple, but might eventually lead to the ultimate in olfactory output technology: smellyvision. According to Doron Lancet, a scientist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, just about any kind of smell can be bottled, from burnt tyres to candy-floss. But he believes it will be possible to make devices that can produce just about any kind of smell without having to have samples of each and every one. “We have mathematical algorithms that could streamline the process of mixing the odours,” he says. These formulae could be used to mix compounds from a palette of smells to produce a range of different odours. In conjunction with an electronic nose, it would then be possible to sample a smell in one place, and synthesise it at another.

This was the dream of DigiScent, an American company that Dr Lancet joined in 2000. DigiScent had the ambitious goal of odourising the internet with digital scents in this way. “We were trying to make odour generators which could be controlled electrically,” he says. But even though their prototype machines could indeed produce a few dozen smells, smellyvision was sadly not to be. “People told us this was a technology ahead of its time,” says Dr Lancet.

A third type of smell technology does not detect or reproduce smells, but prevents the sense of smell from working—providing the olfactory equivalent, in other words, of a blindfold or earplugs. Overcoming horrendous smells can be one of the biggest obstacles in clean-up operations such as those that followed the Asian tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last year. The stench of decaying flesh from bodies floating in the water or hidden inside buildings, combined with the reek of overflowing sewers, is enough to turn even the strongest stomach.

Besides making the conditions for relief workers unimaginably difficult, it can also leave them with memories that haunt them for years. Such an experience can be so unpleasant and powerful that the smell seems to etch itself into the olfactory senses, in what is sometimes called the “barbecue effect”—so named because the smell of burning meat can trigger horrific memories of burnedbodies in firefighters orsoldiers years later.

Yet when clearing up in the aftermath of Katrina, many of the relief workers avoided this possibility by smearing a novel gel under their noses. Called OdorScreen, the gel looks and smells deceptively simple, but is quite unlike other odour-neutralising agents. While the mentholated petroleum jelly that pathologists and crime-scene workers sometimes use is designed to overpower unpleasant smells, OdorScreen interferes with the sense of smell itself. “OdorScreen is a completely different concept,” says Dr Lancet, who acts as a consultant for Patus, the Israeli company that developed the gel.

OdorScreen works by releasing into the nose harmless compounds that interfere with receptor proteins involved in controlling the perception of the intensity of malodours. These mechanisms serve a similar purpose to the iris, which controls how much light enters the eye. Without such mechanisms, our senses would be overwhelmed, says Dr Lancet. The effect lasts for about two hours, after which fresh gel can be applied without fear of an overdose. And unlike a nose clip, the gel does not interfere with breathing.

Since it seems to be capable of concealing all kinds of malodours, the gel could have a wide range of uses beyond disasterrecovery, says Dr Lancet. It could be used in operating theatres, for example, and might even find its way into household products such as nappies. A trivial application, perhaps—but one that is not to be sniffed at.

Nose

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Create Your Own Playlist of Memorable Smells!

Modern technology is revisiting the short-lived 1950s fad for smell-o-vision etc.

The notion of filling a theatre with scents was less problematic than getting rid of them afterwards.

Will this home-entertainment version prove more durable? The smells seem to be a stand-alone attraction now!
I recall that a John Waters film* came with its own scratch-and-sniff card.

*No. Not that one, thankfully!

 

[GNC]

I recall that a John Waters film* came with its own scratch-and-sniff card.

*No. Not that one, thankfully!

That was Polyester. I have the DVD, which includes one of the cards. And yes, there is a shit section. The pizza section is the best!

 

[Mythopoeika]

I remember scratch-and-sniff cards from the 70s. My Dad bought we kids a subscription to a popular science mag (can't remember what it was called now). One issue had some of these cards attached...but they weren't very good. Smelled like chemicals.

 

[David Plankton]

Not too long ago someone posted a youtube link of the Antiques roadshow where someone had brought in a collection of vintage porn mags. I'm sure one of them had a scratch and sniff label on the cover.

The link has gone now, copyright reasons.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

the Antiques roadshow

Somewhere in my archives of unpublishable stuff is a parody of that show in which an expert encounters a special kind of Samurai accessory.

Look away now if easily bothered by sexual things . . .

In these bottles, Samurai warriors collected the vaginal secretions of their lovers to recall joyous times past or, perhaps, remind them of the things for which they were fighting.
I am pretty sure I did not make up this thing! Yet I have never found the name of the object or any evidence it existed!

 

[escargot]

Yet I have never found the name of the object or any evidence it existed!

It's on the tip of your tongue.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I had it valued and mine was the fake, squid one from Aldi.

 

[Swifty]

Not too long ago someone posted a youtube link of the Antiques roadshow where someone had brought in a collection of vintage porn mags. I'm sure one of them had a scratch and sniff label on the cover.

The link has gone now, copyright reasons.

I posted that, it was a spoof link, the snatch and sniff label being part of the film maker's joke .. twas made by Matt Berry and was/is called Antique Bongo ..

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I'm pretty sure my own parody was based on two things. One was the high values places upon Netsuke.

One was among the highest-valued objects on that show way back.

The other was the source I seek! Maybe it will turn out to be one of those fantasies of the depraved East which constitute Orientalism. I know I did not need to invent it - though capable!

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Books and their odours.

There is a comment that pins down the horrid smell of certain American books from a certain period - the 1970s. Science books are blamed but I think it covered the products of some University presses, regardless of their Arts or Science subjects.

I worked in a book warehouse handling these things during the period and had plenty of opportunity to experience the truth of this observation.

Like most bookworms, I more usually find every sense delighted by real-world books. They are staging a come-back we are told, though I believe nothing I read online!

 

[Mythopoeika]

I love the smell of old books. Dunno why. I know I'm not alone in this.