Yale University researchers in collaboration with a Spanish company have introduced a system to detect the vapours emitted by human skin in real time.
The boffins believe that the substances, essentially made up of fatty acids, are what attract mosquitoes and enable dogs to identify their owners.
Now, Electronic Nose To Point Out Wine's Origin
France researchers have found a way to identify wine so accurately they can pinpoint where the drink was made and in which barrel it was fermented.
France researchers have found a way to identify wine so accurately they can pinpoint where the drink was made and in which barrel it was fermented.
The system, created at the Boecillo Technology Park in Valladolid, works by ionising the vapours with an electrospray (a cloud of electrically-charged drops), and later analysing these using mass spectrometry.
"The great novelty of this study is that, despite the almost non-existent volatility of fatty acids, which have chains of up to 18 carbon atoms, the electronic nose is so sensitive that it can detect them instantaneously", says Fernández de la Mora.
The results show that the volatile compounds given off by the skin are primarily fatty acids, although there are also others such as lactic acid and pyruvic acid.
The researcher stresses that the great chemical wealth of fatty acids, made up of hundreds of different molecules, "is well known, and seems to prove the hypothesis that these are the key substances that enable dogs to identify people".
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Another important application of the new system is that it is able to detect tiny amounts of explosives. The system can "smell" levels below a few parts per trillion, and has been able to set a world sensitivity record at "2x10-14 atmospheres of partial pressure of TNT (the explosive trinitrotoluene)".
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TAN
