Bionic Nose Implant World First

 

image: Mark Hooper

 

Just kidding. But there is this announcement of the first bionic eye implant. This can also be called a retinal prosthesis. There's also cochlear prosthetics, for the hearing impaired. And there's even people who can see with their tongues. (And don't forget the hand that feels.)

They all work by turning sensory stimulus, either photons or sound waves, into electrical signals for the brain to understand, and using whatever nerve fibers are available. These artificial sense organs are examples of reverse-engineering - to know how something works so well that you can detail its operations from beginning to end and everything in between.

It is generally understood that Science does not know enough about olfactory perception to reverse-engineer it, and will not know for a long time. The way aromatic molecules stimulate olfactory nerve receptors is still under debate (shape vs. vibration), and what happens after that is even less understood (although the popularity of deep learning neural nets might change that, as they have a lot in common with the olfactory bulb). Smell continues to be the most mysterious of our senses.

POST SCRIPT

Not to mention, smell is (I think) the only sense where we can see evidence of evolution-in-action - people differ in the way they can smell things down to the individual genetic profile, depending on genes that are still in the process of change today. If you're reading this, you have a 2% chance of one of your 'smelling genes' being junk. So you can't smell asparagus-piss, or skunks, or semen, or sixty other possible candidates. Therefore, to create an artificial 'olfactory prosthesis' is to undoubtedly intervene in the trajectory of human evolution, in real-time.

read about our individual "smell fingerprints"

Automated Artificial Skin Sweat Kills Mosquitoes Dead

Liberian warlord General Mosquito perhaps, not sure, maybe General Butt Naked

Let us for a moment recall that Vice episode on Liberia where we met the most fearsome of all warlords, General Mosquito, named after the deadly killers that terrorize the local population, and his arch-nemesis, General Mosquito Killer, who made himself invincible to his enemies by eating kids before a battle, although not necessarily microcephalic kids.

Now, in humans’ never ending battle against the seemingly non-threatening creatures that live here on Earth with us, we have reached new heights.

Ingenious people in Brazil made a wall that secretes a human sweat analogue and exhales human breath. Mosquitoes smell this sweaty signal of blood-pumping meatbodies, and they attack. It’s basically a mouse trap, but instead of cheese, it’s…well, I wonder if the artificial sweaty skin wall eventually develops cheese if it isn’t washed properly.

A couple things to mention and consider: what if these mosquito-traps bring extra pests to a populated place where they would otherwise not have gone to, making the problem worse?

And then also, what does this thing actually smell like? Although it does emit the same volatile compounds as your sweaty commuter-friend’s t-shirt, they won’t have to be anywhere near the amount required for humans to perceive it. And lastly, before you get any ideas, don’t forget that a flat surface is the best way to evaporate stuff, so a fake sweaty person standing on the corner would not have the same effect.

Post Script:

-see the Biologist who made edible cheese out of Michael Pollan’s stomach sweat

-story link to BBC: Can 'sweaty billboard' help fight Zika virus?