News Flash:
Beautiful colorimeter lets you take snapshots of smells
Researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign have developed a way to compare aromas visually using specially developed inks.
Kenneth Suslick and his colleagues used tiny squares of polymer film that hold 36 drops of carefully designed dyes. These pigments change colour when exposed to various chemicals. The result is a cheap system for detecting very low concentrations of gaseous compounds. The cards can be used like a physicist's radiation dose badge to alert lab workers when they have been exposed to toxic gases.
As shown above, the cards can be used to give each particular compound a unique fingerprint. This means that the system can also be used to detect subtle differences in complex aromas, such as coffee.
Suslick's seventeen-year-old son Benjamin carried out the research into coffee aromas, showing how the colorimeters could be used as a quick and reliable way to detect burned or spoiled batches in the food industry.
(from:
Beautiful colorimeter lets you take snapshots of smells : SciencePunk)
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Next up:
We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains.
The evidence lies with a group of 54 wine aficionados. Stay with me here. To the untrained ear, the vocabularies that wine tasters use to describe wine may seem pretentious, more reminiscent of a psychologist describing a patient. (“Aggressive complexity, with just a subtle hint of shyness” is something I once heard at a wine-tasting soirée to which I was mistakenly invited—and from which, once picked off the floor rolling with laughter, I was hurriedly escorted out the door).
These words are taken very seriously by the professionals, however. A specific vocabulary exists for white wines and a specific vocabulary for red wines, and the two are never supposed to cross. Given how individually we each perceive any sense, I have often wondered how objective these tasters actually could be. So, apparently, did a group of brain researchers in Europe. They descended upon ground zero of the wine-tasting world, the University of Bordeaux, and asked: “What if we dropped odorless, tasteless red dye into white wines, then gave it to 54 wine-tasting professionals?” With only visual sense altered, how would the enologists now describe their wine? Would their delicate palates see through the ruse, or would their noses be fooled? The answer is “their noses would be fooled.” When the wine tasters encountered the altered whites, every one of them employed the vocabulary of the reds. The visual inputs seemed to trump their other highly trained senses.
Folks in the scientific community had a field day. Professional research papers were published with titles like “The Color of Odors” and “The Nose Smells What the Eye Sees.” That’s about as much frat boy behavior as prestigious brain journals tolerate, and you can almost see the wicked gleam in the researchers’ eyes. Data such as these point to the nuts and bolts of the Brain Rule: Vision trumps all other senses. Visual processing doesn’t just assist in the perception of our world. It dominates the perception of our world.
(from:
Brain Rules: We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains.)
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And so forth...
When discussing the senses, it's important to remember the overwhelming dominance of vision. After that, the other senses fall into place as variations of touch (touch itself; smell -being the touch of molecules upon the olfactory organ, hearing - being the touch of sound waves upon the hearing apparatus, taste - molecules touching the tongue and nose...
Suffice to say, there are several interesting paths to pursue in all of this - right at the limits of current brain/mind research - not the least of which involve quantum effects.
It's always good to remember, as well:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is - infinite”.
- William Blake