Can We Design a Better Dog Nose?

I've written about the amazing olfactory abilities of dogs before. In an article published yesterday in the NY Times, Henry Fountain describes the quest to make explosives detectors that can match the sensitivity of a dog's nose. Fountain writes,"...[e]mulating the nose and brain of a trained dog is a formidable task. A bomb-sniffing device must be extremely sensitive, able to develop a signal from a relative handful of molecules. And it must be highly selective, able to distinguish an explosive from the “noise” of other compounds. While researchers... are making progress — and there are some vapor detectors on the market — when it comes to sensitivity and selectivity, dogs still reign supreme." It's a fascinating article,highlighting what we know about dogs' sense of smell and what we still don't understand.