Imagine if your olfactory perception was so keen that you could smell blood poisoning or cancer. You would not only be a medical marvel, but people would come to you for consultation instead of going to a doctor. Some cultures would probably even start worshipping you as a living god. Coming back to the real world, scientists from Taiwan have managed to fabricate an artificial nose akin to something we were just talking about. This nose can help smell out bacteria that causes blood poising and can effectively save billions in health care.
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For those unaware, nearly 250 million people die of blood poisoning in America each year. Also, nearly $20 billion is spent each year in treating patients of blood poisoning, and this in the US alone. Clearly, every doctor in America needs to fitted with this nose, if this problem has to be addressed effectively. This amazing invention can smell out blood posing within 24 hours, whereas using the present technology it takes nearly 2 days to detect if someone is afflicted with it. Experts will tell you that 2 days is too long a time because by then the person might die of multiple organ failure or sepsis.
Just in case you were wondering, the artificial nose looks nothing like a real nose; in fact it is a bottle that contains chemicals dots that change color when encountered with the bacteria that causes blood poisoning. The nose in all is capable of smelling out eight different kinds of disease causing bacteria which some would say is simply astonishing. This artificial nose had been in the works for some time, but it is only now that scientists have managed to fine tune it to the degree they want. There is a variation of this nose that can smell cancer via a patient’s breath.
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This device it is said can be used in any part of the world and is at the same time really cost effective. In other words, this invention would really benefit third world nations the most because medical care is virtually absent in some of them. It won’t be too long before this nose will finds its way into regular households and becomes as common as a kit used for checking insulin levels or blood pressure. Interestingly, there is another variation of this nose that can smell certain kinds of explosives.
