Browse Topic: Odors
The wealth of information provided by our senses that allows our brain to navigate the world around us is remarkable. Touch, smell, hearing, and a strong sense of balance are crucial to making it through what to us seem like easy environments such as a relaxing hike on a weekend morning.
Researchers have developed a multifunctional sensor based on semiconductor fibers that emulates the five human senses. Prof. Bonghoon Kim, department of robotics and mechatronics engineering of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST), conducted the study in collaboration with Prof. Sangwook Kim at KAIST, Prof. Janghwan Kim at Ajou University, and Prof. Jiwoong Kim at Soongsil University. The technology developed in the study is expected to be utilized in fields such as wearables, Internet of Things (IoT), electronic devices, and soft robotics.
In people with epilepsy, seizure-alert dogs can smell small changes in body chemistry and warn of an impending seizure an hour or more before it occurs. Inspired by this feat of nature, a team of researchers has developed a way to replicate that ability with technology.
Aryballe Technology's unique sensors-on-a-chip solution aims to end the subjectivity of the human nose while neutralizing vehicle cabin odors. Whether they're riding in an autonomous shuttle, a transit bus, a train or a rental car, passengers often face cabin air full of “mal odors” - bad smells - including cigarette and vape smoke, pungent food, blatant lack of personal hygiene and worse. Where the off-gassing of plastics and leather in new vehicles had been a minor issue in the past, the olfactory (science of smells) experience is increasingly a key differentiator in rider satisfaction as new mobility solutions emerge. Ensuring a neutral-smelling passenger space is a growing focus of fleet owners and managers, particularly as autonomy becomes established in the commercial-transportation sector. Looking to a future of driverless shuttles, OEMs in the field (i.e., Cruise Automation, Waymo, Navya, Transdev, EasyMile and a host of players in China) are investigating olfaction-based sensing and notification technologies for integration into their AVs.
The problem of air pollution particularly particulate matter has to be considered seriously for the workers in confined spaces such as mines etc. This serious impact can be solved with the inclusion of wet scrubber in the exhaust system which removes the toxic particulate matter from the exhaust gas stream. In the wet scrubber, the exhaust gases from diesel engines are being brought into contact with the scrubbing liquid. In the current study, wet scrubber was designed and fabricated employing various nozzles at different orientations so that it facilitates effective encounter of gaseous pollutants with the scrubbing liquid. The experimental study was carried out employing both human and equipment assessment. The study was conducted with the inclusion of biodiesel blend (B20) together with the scrubbing system and the results were compared with the baseline diesel fuel. Also, the experiment was repeated using variation of parameter of scrubbing liquid like temperature i.e., cold and hot liquid. Along with the emission parameters, exhaust odor reduction and eye irritation time were noted. Thus, it was observed that effective reduction of pollutants, eye irritation and odor intensity was achieved with the addition of biodiesel as well as exhaust gas treatment system i.e. wet scrubber system. The optimum conditions for CO, HC Smoke level, Odor rating and Eye irritation time was observed at the load of 25%.
Trained dogs can detect many kinds of disease — including lung, breast, bladder, and prostate cancers and possibly COVID-19 — simply through smell. But it takes time to train such dogs and their availability and time is limited. Researchers have come up with a system that can detect the chemical and microbial content of an air sample with even greater sensitivity than a dog's nose. They coupled this to a machine-learning process that can identify the distinctive characteristics of the disease-bearing samples.
Robots have replicated much of the human sensory experience on Mars. Cameras have given us sight; robotic hands, arms, and feet have supplied touch; and chemical and mineral sensors have let us taste and smell on Mars. Hearing is the last of the five senses yet to be exercised on the Red Planet.
Aromatic substances, which are added to the fuel as fluorescing tracers, are in widespread use as a means of investigating mixing and reaction processes in IC engines by laser-based visualization techniques. The fuel/tracer/air mixture may differ from the pure fuel/air mixture in its chemical and its physical properties, and both aspects can be equally relevant for engine operation. They may, furthermore, interact due to the dependence of chemical reaction on physical conditions. In this paper, we study the overall influence of toluene as an exemplary aromatic tracer on engine performance by numerical modeling. The used model features a semi-detailed treatment of chemical reactions for both the fuel and the tracer, as well as their mutual chemical kinetics interactions. The dependence of engine performance parameters like auto-ignition timing and maximum pressures on these parameters is investigated by performing a large set of parametric simulations. To highlight the difference between physical and chemical influence of the tracer, we compare the case of engine operation with pure fuel/air mixture and with a tracer-fuel/air mixture under different aspects: First, a comparison is made based on equal physical conditions, namely equal temperature, pressure and equivalence ratio. In contrast, a second way of comparison is based on equal engine operation parameters. While the first highlights the kinetic aspect of the tracer-fuel interaction, the latter additionally includes the modification of the physical conditions of the mixture by addition of the tracer. The objective of the paper is the theoretical investigation of these aspects based on a widely evaluated chemical kinetic mechanism to improve the understanding and applicability of tracer-LIF diagnostics towards instationary reactive conditions like in compression induced auto-ignition in IC engines.
Several studies in the field of hedonics using subjective responses to gauge the nature and influence of odors have attempted to explain the complex psychological and chemical processes. Work on the effect of odors in alleviating driver fatigue is limited. The potential to improve road safety through non-pharmacological means such as stimulating odors is the impetus behind this paper. This is especially relevant in developing countries today with burgeoning economies such as India. Longer road trips by commercial transport vehicles with increasingly fatigued drivers and risk of accidents are being fuelled by distant producer - consumer connections. This work describes a two stage comparative study on the effects of different odors typically obtainable in India. The stages involve administration of odorants orthonsally and retronasally after the onset of circadian fatigue in test subjects. This is followed by a small cognitive exercise to evaluate hand-eye coordination. Instead of actual driving tests on public roads, this test safely and objectively gauges the effects of the odors on cognitive impairment due to circadian fatigue. In addition, details of precautions taken during the experiments to avoid pitfalls such as odor contamination by ambient atmosphere, olfactory desensitization, odorant conflicts etc. are also provided. The experimental findings and results shall present a picture of the relative effects of the various odors typically available in India on cognitive impairment due to operator fatigue and suggest future avenues of research.
An easy and instant method of detection was needed for AF-M315E, a “green” propellant that produces very little vapor. This makes it hard to detect by smell or other active sensors.
This paper reviews reportable aviation incidents and associated cost losses. Aviation incidents include visible smoke incidents inside aircraft passenger cabins, occurrences of fumes and oily smells, and illness cases reported by flight crew members in 2012, for US based carriers for domestic flights and all international flights that either originated or terminated in the US. Cost losses include direct and indirect costs endured by different airlines due to diversions from the scheduled flight route, returns to departure airport, expedited arrival procedures, and cancellation of flights on ground. Two case study scenarios are presented to illustrate minimum and maximum costs limits. Sources used to collect data for this article include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Aviation Administration online database, Research and Innovative Technology Administration database (RITA), and official airline websites. Average financial loss is estimated to be approximately $32,000 to $47,000 per aviation incident totaling approximately $4.5M to $7M US dollars in 2012. This figure could be doubled when under-reporting of such incidents is taken into consideration.
Many diseases are accompanied by characteristic odors, and their recognition can provide diagnostic clues, guide the laboratory evaluation, and affect the choice of immediate therapy. The study of the chemical composition in human breath using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) has shown a correlation between the volatile compounds and the occurrence of certain illnesses. The presence of those specific compounds can provide an indication to physiological malfunction and support the diagnosis of diseases. This condition requires an analytical tool with very high sensitivity for measurement.
This study has been conducted to analyze microbial diversity and its community by using a method of NGS(Next generation sequencing) technique that is not rely on cultivation for microbial community in an core evaporator causing odor of car air conditioner. The NGS without any cultivation method of cultivation, has been developed recently and widely. This method is able to research a microorganism that has not been cultivated. Differently with others, it can get a result that is closer to fact, also can acquire more base sequence with larger volume in relatively shorter time. According to bacteria population analysis of 23 samples, It can be known limited number of bacteria can inhabit in Evaporator core, due to small exposure between bacteria and evaporate, as well as its environmental characteristics. With the population analysis, only certain group of it is forming biofilm in proportion.
In last 10 years or so, a number of OEMs are designing vehicles with start-stop function to save energy and to reduce pollution. For these systems, the situations in which air-conditioning systems are used have been changing with a significant increase in adoption of idle-time reduction systems (no idling-system). Blower fan remains operating at idle condition while compressor stops in most cases for these systems. In this case, the air temperature at the vent outlets increases. The increase in the air temperature under range of thermal boundary conditions around the evaporator causes a concern of odor to occur. This paper describes and explains experimental studies on changes in heat and humidity at the air outlets according to the switching operation of compressor and root cause analyses of odor coming from air-conditioning system for vehicles with start-stop function.
AROMA uses a boundary-element formulation to calculate normal and shear pressure distributions and sub-surface stresses for elastic bodies in contact. In addition to handling static normal and sheer loading, it also solves the contact problem for rolling elements such as bearings, traction drives, and wheel-to-rail interfaces. AROMA is a powerful and flexible tool for studying the tractive forces that arise during rolling in combination with kinematic effects, such as creepage and spin that are related to rolling element alignment. This GUI-based tool was developed in MATLAB, and can run within the MATLAB environment or as a standalone application.
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Plants and animals-renewable resources-have begun to make measurable contributions to materials for equipment design. In 1940, Henry Ford took an axe to his own car. More accurately, for publicity photos and in live demonstrations, he smacked the axe into a specially made, soy-based plastic rear deck lid of his own car to illustrate the toughness of the plastic. Sometime in late 1941, one prototype Ford was built with body panels of soy-based plastics. The culmination of decades of Henry Ford's enthusiastic support of materials made from agricultural sources-some date it back to 1910, with a coil cover partially made from wheat gluten and asbestos fibers-came at a bad time. Within a few months, all advances in materials development were redirected to wartime needs. The plastic car languished. Though dent- and crack-resistant, it was not ready for large-scale production.
With the increase in the market's requirement level and the incited dispute for the consumers, the automotive industry has given special attention to the customer's perceived quality. One of the aspects related to the quality perception is the "new car's smell." The trend, shown by the market, is to control this characteristic in a subjective way, by means of especially trained panel. This paper aims at analyzing this question by another point of view, leaving the subjectivity and searching to characterize the new car's smell in an analytical and concrete way. It was shown that the main VOCs contained in a poly(vinyl chloride) matrix are 2-butanone, acetic acid ethyl ester, toluene, acetic acid butyl ester, cyclohexanone and 1-hydroxycumene. The evaporation rate of the VOCs was studied and its impact in atmospheric global composition evaluated.
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