Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Like the cure for cancer and intelligent artificial intelligence, the ultimate mechanical nose
is on the job sniffing, just around the bend of the next news or grant cycle. Every time there's
a bit of engineered-nose news out there, the media shifts into high gear. People love a couple
of things: way-cool technology and dogs. Perhaps cool technology is hotter than the ever-
faithful canine, but we know dogs will be there waiting for us even after we've hooked up
with the latest gadgets.
Just a year and a half after
Time
magazine informed dogs that they were working on bor-
rowed time, I started Solo's serious training with Nancy Hook. I was able to read and un-
derstand his behavior changes. I knew what happened to scent in heat, in wind, in rain, and
water. I was Dr. Dog Science.
That same summer, Glen Rains at the University of Georgia and his colleagues filed
their patent for “The Wasp Hound,” an eight-inch portable tube filled with starved parasitic
wasps, a fan, a video camera, and a computer. When the target scent wafted into the cham-
ber—whether it was the scent of human remains or of a bomb—the trained wasps would
congregate at a pinhole, hoping for their food reward. The video camera watched the wasps
and signaled their behavior change to a computer. The patent application called dogs “sub-
jective and costly.” Wasps were “more sensitive, programmable, portable, and cryptic.” That
last adjective was critical in a post-9/11 world. On that point alone, the small, silent wasps in
the tube triumphed. From the day he was born, Solo was never, ever cryptic.
At least I could understand the concept of the Wasp Hound as I looked at the application's
illustrations. I couldn't say the same about the dog-on-a-chip, although its inventors called
it “an elegant fusion of biotechnology and microelectronics.” However, Solo wasn't any more
elegant than he was cryptic. He did have more in common with some components of the
Wasp Hound than with many of the bioengineered noses. He and the wasps might not be
same species, but they both belonged to the kingdom of Animalia.
• • •
Mechanical noses, mixtures of mechanisms and organisms, or their newest iteration, genetic-
ally engineered cells, have been a Holy Grail for applied scientists. Some researchers continue
debating the physics of scent while others labor to understand what dogs are alerting on. A
third group has dismissed the dog nose altogether and is working on its replacement. Though
the dog's nose might be a black box and a real challenge to reverse-engineer, no scientific law
says you can't try to build a better black box before you understand what's inside the original.
The first artificial nose became available in 1982, the same year
USA Today
was launched.
The “Warwick nose” had a sensor made of tin oxide and is still produced for commercial uses.
In 1988,
Computer Business Review
noted that drug kingpins could use masking odors, “leav-
ing poor pooches puzzled,” but the Warwick nose could do better. The only thing needed,
