The nose knows, you know. After years of suspecting that animals with better senses of smell can detect illness in odor, scientists in Israel have gone ahead and built an artificial nose capable of sniffing out whether or not you have cancer.
The Nanoscale Artificial NOSE (or NA-NOSE for short) was built by Professor Hossam Haick and a team at the Israel Institute of Technology, and contains five gold nanoparticle sensors connecting to software capable of detecting molecules in human breath symptomatic of head and neck cancers. So far, the NA-NOSE has successfully detected cancers in 87 volunteers, although further testing will be required before the device will be allowed for use outside the lab.
Sadly, the NA-NOSE doesn’t look anything like a giant nose. Clearly, a redesign should be in the cards before its official release, if only for the comedy moment of revelation.
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