Its reaction with the odour molecules changes a detector's electrical resistance, and this signal is fed into a neural net (the closest that computer technology has got to imitating the pattern-recognising abilities of networks of nerve cells) to work out what is being smelt.

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TiVo and Replay Networks "offer a really logical progression to convergence because they take a lot of computer technology and apply it to television in a manner that is very easy for the consumer to understand, " Baker said.

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