A nose that knows a smoker

摘要

Some people tell their doctors that they are non-smokers in a bid to get cheaper life insurance. But an electronic nose could scupper such deception.rnA team led by Paul Thomas at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, tweaked a commercially available e-nose so that it would detect the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the breath of a person who had smoked a cigarette. The e-nose uses an array of 32 sensors whose electrical resistance changes as different VOCs are detected.