Scientists have come up with a way of creating sensors which
could allow machines to smell more accurately than humans.
Every odour has its own specific pattern which our noses are
able to identify. Using a combination of proteins coupled to transistors, for
the first time machines are able to differentiate smells that are mirror images
of each other, so called chiral molecules, something that has not been possible
before. The human nose can distinguish between some of these molecules and the
different forms of the same molecule of carvone, for example, can smell either
like spearmint or caraway. Previous machines would not have been able to
distinguish between the two.