Struck by the legendary sniffing skills of man's best friend, scientists in the United States fitted a dog-inspired plastic nose to an explosives detector, and reported it worked much better. With the prosthetic nose, and programmed to take multiple "sniffs" of the air rather a single, long suction, the machine was 16 times more sensitive in detecting molecules in the air, the team reported in the journal Scientific Reports. "By mimicking the way a dog sniffs, we can improve the performance of commercial trace vapour detection systems," study co-author Matthew Staymates of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said
This may improve detection of anything from explosives, narcotics, disease-causing pathogens, perhaps even cancer. Staymates and a team read up on the workings of the canine "nose" when the dog is sniffing. The organ exhales and inhales about five times per second to collect odours, which are then analysed by some 300 million receptor cells. The team then used a 3D printer to create the outer shell of a plastic "nose" fashioned after the snout of a Labrador retriever.
