Tag Archives: Paris

Smelling Paris in New York (update on the oPhone)

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The American Museum of Natural History in New York was the recipient of the world’s first (?) transatlantic oPhone transmission on Tuesday, June 17, 2014. Linda Tischler provides an account of the event in her June 17, 2014 article about the latest on the oPhone for Fast Company (Note: Links have been removed),

At 11:31 EDT on Tuesday [June 17, 2014], an email message encoded with the scent of Paris, winged its way across the ether to land in the inbox of a Harvard professor waiting eagerly in a skull-littered basement room in New York’s American Museum of Natural History.

The onote, as such scent-embedded mail is known–originated at Le Laboratoire in Paris as a picture of a plate of macaroons and a glass of champagne, and was tagged via an iPhone app called oSnap, with the elements–tropical fruit, cocoa beans and champagne–that comprised their aroma.

messages [sic]–the aroma was, well, undeniably smelly, if a tad muddled. A hint of chocolate was there; something sort of fruity came through; the champagne would have been hard to detect without knowing what to smell for. Did it evoke wine and cookies? Not really. But, to its credit, the gadget worked.

“When you play all three scents at once, it’s sometimes hard to determine what you’re smelling,” says David Edwards, Harvard professor of idea translation and co-inventor of the device with Rachel Field, a former Harvard student.

I first mentioned David Edwards and Rachel Field along with their oPhone project in a Feb. 14, 2014 posting, which describes preliminary testing in Paris and provides links to a research paper. It seems there’s been good progress since then as the American Museum of Natural History is now preparing to host three oPhone hotspot weekends in July 2014 as Tischler notes in her article,

While potential users can currently download the app for free from the Apple app store, there’s no way yet for them to play their aromatic missives without going to an oPhone-equipped hotspot. Starting on July 12 [2014], and continuing for three consecutive weekends, the museum will host a hotspot in New York where people can come and retrieve the onotes they’ve been sent. There will be other hotspots in Paris and Cambridge, with more to come.

Since tagging photos with scent is a skill that few people have yet mastered, the museum will also host free “scent adventures,” where an olefactorially-skilled expert — a chef, a coffee connoisseur, or a chocolatier, for example — will coach aroma newbies in how to compose a scent that resembles what they’re smelling. The app itself comes with a vocabulary of “notes”–green vegetation, grilled bread, onion, jasmine, cedar, for example–that allows users to compose more than 300,000 different scents.

Weirdly, the American Natural History Museum’s June 17, 2014 news release about the oPhone and the upcoming ‘scent’ weekends provides less detail,

For three consecutive weekends starting on July 12 [2014], the Museum will feature an oPhone in its Sackler Educational Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Human Origins, where visitors can try the technology and learn about how smell is processed in humans compared to our primate and hominid relatives.

It seems the museum’s weekend oPhone hotspot events came together very quickly since they are not yet (as of June 18, 2014 at 0930 hours PDT) listed in the museum’s July 2014 calendar of events.

A June 18, 2014 Harvard University news release by Alvin Powell provides some detail about the latest physical configuration for the oPhone,

The oPhone system consists of several parts. It begins with the oSnap app for iPhones (an android version is in development) that allows a user to create an oNote, consisting of a photograph and a smell created out of a palette of 32 scents available in the app that can be combined in 300,000 possible combinations.

The sender then forwards the oNote to an oPhone — the hardware portion of the enterprise — which re-creates the aroma from the oSnap app. The key component of the oPhone is the oChip, which creates the actual smell.

The oPhone looks a bit like a desk telephone, only instead of a handset, it has two small hollow towers — from which the newly created scents emerge — extending from the top.

In the hopes of making their oPhone more available the researchers and inventors have instituted an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, oPhone Duo; bringing scent to mobile messaging,

There is a special offer which expires 12 pm (noon; 1200 hours) Paris time on June 19, 2014,

 $149 USD

LIMITED TIME OFFER – If you choose this perk between now and 12pm on June 19th Paris time, we will throw in an EXTRA PACK OF CUSTOM OCHIPS FOR FREE!!! Be among the first to buy an oPhone DUO. We’ll include one pack of oChips (replaceable aroma cartridges) that support two of our first aromatic vocabularies to get you started. What you get: 1 oPhone DUO 1 pack of Foodie I.D. oChips 1 pack of Base Notes oChips FREE SHIPPING

In two days (campaign opened June 16, 2014), they have raised $7800 towards a goal of $150,000 and a campaign deadline of July 31, 2014.

Good luck!

Does more nano-enabled security = more nano-enabled surveillance?

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A May 6, 2014 essay by Brandon Engel published on Nanotechnology Now poses an interesting question about the use of nanotechnology-enabled security and surveillance measures (Note: Links have been removed),

Security is of prime importance in an increasingly globalized society. It has a role to play in protecting citizens and states from myriad malevolent forces, such as organized crime or terrorist acts, and in responding, as well as preventing, both natural and man-made disasters. Research and development in this field often focuses on certain broad areas, including security of infrastructures and utilities; intelligence surveillance and border security; and stability and safety in cases of crisis. …

Nanotechnology is coming to play an ever greater title:role in these applications. Whether it’s used for detecting potentially harmful materials for homeland security, finding pathogens in water supply systems, or for early warning and detoxification of harmful airborne substances, its usefulness and efficiency are becoming more evident by the day.

He’s quite right about these applications. For example, I’ve just published (May 9, 2014) piece ‘Textiles laced with carbon nanotubes for clothing that protects against poison gas‘.

Engel goes on to describe a dark side to nanotechnology-enabled security,

On the other hand, more and more unsettling scenarios are fathomable with the advent of this new technology, such as covertly infiltrated devices, as small as tiny insects, being used to coordinate and execute a disarming attack on obsolete weapons systems, information apparatuses, or power grids.

Engel is also right about the potential surveillance issues. In a Dec. 18, 2013 posting I featured a special issue of SIGNAL Magazine (which covers the latest trends and techniques in topics that include C4ISR, information security, intelligence, electronics, homeland security, cyber technologies,  …) focusing on nanotechnology-enabled security and surveillance,

The Dec. 1, 2013 article by Rita Boland (h/t Dec. 13, 2013 Azonano news item) does a good job of presenting a ‘big picture’ approach including nonmilitary and military  nanotechnology applications  by interviewing the main players in the US,

Nanotechnology is the new cyber, according to several major leaders in the field. Just as cyber is entrenched across global society now, nano is poised to be the major capabilities enabler of the next decades. Expert members from the National Nanotechnology Initiative representing government and science disciplines say nano has great significance for the military and the general public.

For anyone who may think Engel is exaggerating when he mentions tiny insects being used for surveillance, there’s this May 8, 2014 post (Cyborg Beetles Detect Nerve Gas) by Dexter Johnson on his Nanoclast blog (Note: Dexter is an engineer who describes the technology in a somewhat detailed, technical fashion). I have a less technical description of some then current research in an Aug. 12, 2011 posting featuring some military experiments, for example, a surveillance camera disguised as a hummingbird (I have a brief video of a demonstration) and some research into how smartphones can be used for surveillance.

Engel comes to an interesting conclusion (Note: A link has been removed),

The point is this: whatever conveniences are seemingly afforded by these sort of technological advances, there is persistent ambiguity about the extent to which this technology actually protects or makes us more vulnerable. Striking the right balance between respecting privacy and security is an ever-elusive goal, and at such an early point in the development of nanotech, must be approached on a case by case basis. … [emphasis mine]

I don’t understand what Engel means when he says “case by case.” Are these individual applications that he feels are prone to misuse or specific usages of these applications? In any event, while I appreciate the concerns (I share many of them), I don’t think his proposed approach is practicable and that leads to another question, what can be done? Sadly, I have no answers but I am glad to see the question being asked in the ‘nanotechnology webspace’.

I did some searching for Bandon Engel online and found this January 17, 2014 guest post (about a Dean Koontz book) on The Belle’s Tales blog. He also has a blog of his own, Brandon Engel where he describes himself this way,

Musician, filmmaker, multimedia journalist, puppeteer, and professional blogger based in Chicago.

The man clearly has a wide range of interests and concerns.

As for the question posed in this post’s head, I don’t think there is a simple one-to-one equivalency where one more security procedure results in one more surveillance procedure. However, I do believe there is a relationship between the two and that sometimes increased security is an argument used to support increased surveillance procedures. While Engel doesn’t state that explicitly in his piece, I think it is implied.

One final thought, surveillance is not new and one of the more interesting examples of the ‘art’ is featured in a description of the Parisian constabulary of the 18th century written by Nina Kushner in ,

The Case of the Closely Watched Courtesans
The French police obsessively tracked the kept women of 18th-century Paris. Why? (Slate.com, April 15, 2014)

or

Republished as: French police obsessively tracked elite sex workers of 18th-century Paris — and well-to-do men who hired them (National Post, April 16, 2014)

Kushner starts her article by describing contemporary sex workers and a 2014 Urban Institute study and then draws parallels between now and 18th Century Parisian sex workers while detailing advances in surveillance reports,

… One of the very first police forces in the Western world emerged in 18th-century Paris, and one of its vice units asked many of the same questions as the Urban Institute authors: How much do sex workers earn? Why do they turn to sex work in the first place? What are their relationships with their employers?

…

The vice unit, which operated from 1747 to 1771, turned out thousands of hand-written pages detailing what these dames entretenues [kept women] did. …

… They gathered biographical and financial data on the men who hired kept women — princes, peers of the realm, army officers, financiers, and their sons, a veritable “who’s who” of high society, or le monde. Assembling all of this information required cultivating extensive spy networks. Making it intelligible required certain bureaucratic developments: These inspectors perfected the genre of the report and the information management system of the dossier. These forms of “police writing,” as one scholar has described them, had been emerging for a while. But they took a giant leap forward at midcentury, with the work of several Paris police inspectors, including Inspector Jean-Baptiste Meusnier, the officer in charge of this vice unit from its inception until 1759. Meusnier and his successor also had clear literary talent; the reports are extremely well written, replete with irony, clever turns of phrase, and even narrative tension — at times, they read like novels.

If you have the time, Kushner’s well written article offers fascinating insight.

NanoCelluComp (nanocellulose composites) goes to JEC Composites Show and Conference in Paris (France)

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NanoCelluComp (nanocellulose composites), a European Commission-funded project under the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme, which is entering its final stage (2011 – 2014) will make an appearance (Exhibition Stand D83) at the JEC 2014 Composites Show and Conferences in Paris (France), 11-13th March, 2014.

I  profileded NanoCelluComp in a March 7, 2013 posting where I included excerpts from the project’s 4th newsletter. The 5th (August 2013) newsletter is available here. There is also a project flyer (PDF), which provides some additional insight into why the project was developed and what NanoCellulComp was attempting to accomplish,

Food processing of vegetables produces billions of tonnes of fibrous waste. The cellulose fibres contained within this waste have superior structural properties that with ‘green’ chemistry can be put to much better use. Composites containing cellulose extracted from carrot waste have already been incorporated in lightweight products such as fishing rods and steering wheels.

This material – Curran – while exhibiting good structural properties, does not have the strength of glass or carbon fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP and CFRP) and is further disadvantaged due to limited processability.

The NanoCelluComp Process Improving on Curran through:

Liberating microfibrillated cellulose (nanocellulose) from vegetable waste streams utilising an aqueous based process (thus decreasing energy consumption, and avoiding volatile chemicals).
 Improving mechanical properties by the controlled alignment and cross linking of nanocellulose fibrils.
 Combining the resultant fibres with bio-based resins to produce a 100% bio-composite (thus decreasing use of petroleum-based products).
 Ensuring compatibility of the bio-composite with current manufacturing processes (e.g. injection moulding, hand lay-up).
 Investigating the sustainability of the above processes and materials, compared to existing materials, through a full life-cycle assessment (LCA) and identifying promising application fields.

Most of the ‘nanocellulose’ material that I’ve covered has been focused on derivations from forest products however there is one other team (that I know of) led by researcher Alcides Leão of Brazil examining the possible uses of nanocellulose derived from pineapples and bananas. On that note, my June 13, 2011 posting titled: Transcript of nanocellulose fibre podcast interview with Alcides Leão, Ph.D., from São Paulo State University and/or my March 28, 2011 posting titled: Nanocellulose fibres, pineapples, bananas, and cars may be of interest.