"One of the problems with existing electronic nose instruments is that they're very large and another thing is that they have limited similarities with the biological nose, " Dr Pearce told the BBC.

BBC: Scientists develop 'nose-on-a-chip'

"There is a huge amount of potential for this work, not only in finding out where cancer is present but also in the development of an electronic nose in the future, " said Dr Guest.

BBC: Beds, Herts & Bucks

In a decade's time, Bishop predicted an "electronic nose" would be able to detect the pheromones that make up individuals' scent, and could even be used as a "hacker-proof" security system, replacing pin numbers and passwords.

CNN: Phones will soon be able to smell

The electronic nose is an array of nano-scale gas sensors--the maximized surface area of the nano-particles allows the most gas to pass over them--along with pattern recognition technology that can create a digital fingerprint (or noseprint, as the case may be) of specific smells.

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