Thursday 18 November 2010

Can you smell that picture?

Imagine your favorite food-can you smell it? What you smell is related to what you see and also reflect your BMI. Nowadays a lot of innovations made our life more convenient, and we are more fascinated with them. I picked up two articles, both of them are about odor. Let’s start with the scented picture.

In “With this printer, what you see is what you smell” by Paul Marks introduces a new invented gadget, the odor printer. In mid-20th century, it is first time that aroma was adapted to entertaining activity, AromaRama, Aroma movie theater was invented. While we are enjoy watching movie, the scent was pump thought delicate pipes into air condition in the theater. Another gadget is iSmell, USB device created by Digiscents in 2000. Both of inventions have unpleasant outcome, a noxious stench from many scents combination. However, it won’t be problem for this odor printer. By the same mechanism as a standard Canon ink-jet printer, Kenichi Okada and colleagues create an olfactory display. The odor printer can print and project four scents at a time such as aromas of lemon, vanilla, lavender, apple, cinnamon, grapefruit and mint. The next step is to find out how to automatically sync scents with pictures. It would take a long time before the odor printer would be launched in to the market because Okada and his colleagues have to work out how to general-purpose aroma creator.

The sense of smell also reflects your BMI. According to “Overweight people sniff out food better, even after lunch” by Catherine de Lange reports that smell affect how the things taste By Lorenzo Stafford and Kimberley Welbeck’s research show that the person who has high BMI are less able to detect non-odor food than the lower BMI, but do better in detecting food smell. They also point out that after a meal your will sensitive to herbal scent, your sense of smelling will increase, it is a natural signal that your body tells you when it no longer requires food. With the heightened sense of smell it persuades the high BMI to eat more even they are full. Consequently, it is the reason why the higher BMI gain more weight.

For the news, it present how is technology become another important part in nowadays life. In the past, we only have book and painting for entertainment. As the time pass technology bring us to digital era. For example at first we have 2 dimensions television, now has 3D and going to be 4D in the future.Smelling is one of human perception. If we use technology to play with sense of smelling, it would push the world in to the new era. In another way, smell also always come together with foods. For instance,when we get sick, we bored with food because we loss the sense of smelling. by the way, we prefer to eat a good smell food because it stimulates your appetite. In de Lange's article shows that food smell play a role in human appetite. I think that when pictures and TV can express aromas, it would be popular in cooking and food field. I am waiting to see a cooking program with a smell of delicious food.

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References

Marks, P.(2010,October 22). “With this printer, what you see is what you smell. NewScientist. Retrieved November 18, 2010 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827834.500

De Lange, C.(2010, November 17). “Overweight people sniff out food better, even after lunch”. NewScientist. Retrieved November 18, 2010 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19736-overweight-people-sniff-out-food-better-even-after-lunch.html

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. You and Cristina choose the same news. Haha ^^

    When I read, I think about many years ago (I'm not sure how many years). Thailand had a commercial advertisement that people can smell from a little peice of paper which had smell, good smell. People may get that papers from kiosk in the supermarkets (I'm not sure where we can get them) and when that advertisement on air, you can smell from that papers follow by the numbers that shown on TV.

    External from Aroma theater in this news, I think of a movie from western that shown in ordinary theaters, had smell when you watched follow by the numbers that shown on the screen and smell them from papers but it had not only good smell, but it also had bad smll too.

    I quite sure that the movie came before and the advertisement copied this idea.

    In my opinion, sometimes good smell make me feel good when I work or do my homework like when I was young and studied in high school, I had an odor pen, when I used it, it can boost up me to do my homework.

    Now I want to try odor printer, it's interesting!!!

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  3. It's interesting article. When I read and I smell something. It's fantastic that I smelled objects in which I had experiences before. According to Orn's comment, why advertisement company have to give a smelling paper in the same time when advertisement launched a campaign. To build a smelling experience in customer for selling products , it seems extra from advertisement in general because it stimulates one more human's perception.

    I agree with you that the sense of smell also reflects your BMI. But I confuse if the smelling is one of basic human perception. How can one person have a good sense more than the other one? Is it related to experience? Or not?

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  4. Nan, your post remembers me our last paragraph, homework from rw5 about junk food companies, obesity... When I was looking for information I found one study which got my attention; it is how the aspect and smell of the food affect to our appetite. Studies confirm that the colors and the smell of the food have a great influence in why people choose one food or another, and is why fast food companies spend much money innovating new products full of colorants and powerful odors.

    When I was young I used to joke with my friends talking about Mcdonald's? We said that Mcdonald's put drug in the food, in this way when you pass near a restaurant and smell the odor of hamburgers, fries, sauces... you need to eat a Mc menu, even when you just finish eating your meal. Of course we were just joking, but the thing is that all of us believed that our appetite increased a lot when we smelled the food odor near a Mcdonal's, even after we had a lunch 15 minutes before.

    Nan, I would love to go to watch a movie in a theater with different odors according the specific scenes ^_รข

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  5. From Nan's article make me think about "Starbucks" .They use smelling strategy for attract their customers' appetite by spray coffee's smell on air conditioners. However, coffee's Starbucks is so expensive when compare with others brand, but it's really work.

    Now,we have ador printer and next might ador mobile phone such as one of applications from i-phone.

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  6. It is a very interesting article. If we can smell a picture or movie, I think it is very wonderful. However, there are some risk because of this technology. Supposing that, there is a mad guy who want to kill someone for fun. Unfortunately, this guy are clever in computer science and know how to do a smell poison. He will have more opportunities to kill somebody through the computer.

    I think this case like the virus computer that invade and destroy our computer. We can protect them but not 100%, it's possibilities to be attacked. "Smell virus computer" is the same but it have impact on person straightly. That why, it 's more dangerous.

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  7. I like the idea of the odor printer, I'm thinking odor novels!! It would be fun. An odor novel or poetry book would be a whole new experience for us all. We wouldn't just get to picture a forest or a flower field, we will smell it. We'll even know what perfumes they're wearing. (this might be where advertising comes in)

    Plus, smelling scents bring back the memories. The scents I'm familiar with and when ever I smell them bring back so much memories, for example, are the smell of sunny afternoons when we come out of class early, the smell of fresh cut grass, the smell of the beginning of winters, and the smell of book stores, etc. Having those kinds of scents in the film or books will make them more relatable, I hope there are such things.

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