Cyrano: Smell on a chip

Although smelling milk is a relatively accurate way of telling if it has spoiled, the human sense of smell is hardly an optimal tool for quality control. Cyrano Sciences Inc. believes that its sensor technology, which digitizes the sense of smell, will supplement QC processes in the food, beverage and chemical industries.

"People are able to perform vision and tactile tests, but it's harder for them to do smell tests - QC people really don't have an option for vapor detection," said Saskia Feast, the company's technical marketing manager. "Furthermore, our product is sensitive to certain organics that people aren't." The product also is able to detect vapors that may be harmful to humans, the company said...