I Underwent Treatment For Cancer Of The Nose......Gov. Chime

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“In August last year, I was privileged to be one of those nominated by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum to go to Germany to study their federalism, I was to represent the South-East zone; I had to use the opportunity of the trip to pass through London to do my medicals since it was the only opportunity I had to do that. After my medical, I was certified fit by the doctors, but I noticed that I had a little growth beneath my jaw. Ordinarily, nobody could see it but I felt it seriously and asked the doctors to do further investigation on it.

Detectors aim to go nose to nose with sniffer dogs

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A sniffing dog at work.
| credits: google.com

At a binational armaments and security research centre in eastern France, Spitzer and his colleagues are working on a sensor to detect vapours of TNT and other explosives in very faint amounts, as might emanate from a bomb being smuggled through airport security. Using microscopic slivers of silicon covered with forests of even smaller tubes of titanium oxide, they aim to create a device that could supplement, perhaps even supplant, the best mobile bomb detector in the business: the sniffer dog.

But emulating 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 like Spitzer are making progress – and there are some vapor detectors on the market – when it comes to sensitivity and selectivity, dogs still reign supreme.

“Dogs are awesome,” said Aimee Rose, a product sales director at the sensor