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Identifying People By Odor As Effective As Fingerprinting
A study has found that everybody has a unique body odor, like their fingerprints, that could be used as an unique identifier. The study showed that a persons unique odor stayed the same even if they varied their diet with strong smelling foods such as garlic and spices. "These findings indicate that biologically-based odorprints, like fingerprints, could be a reliable way to identify individuals," said Monell chemist Jae Kwak. I would have thought that hundreds of years of dogs tracking people would have proved this, but it's nice to know that science has figured it out officially now.
Why is this even Idle? This is actually somewhat interesting.... I hate Idle, Btw.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
i need to know
each persons' fart has its own unique flavor too. although I don't envy the poor bastard who has to test this theory.
It's on Idle because this idea was invented by Shampoo.
the idea that fingerprints are unique is stupid, especially for anyone who is actually in law enforcement or forensics. you need 12 count it TWELVE different points of matching to even get a fingerprint submitted for evidence. so if this odor is just as effective that means its pretty much a scare tactic as much as "we got your fingerprints at the scene!" is
You people. First you complain that Idle isn't any good, and now you're complaining that it shouldn't be any good?
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
I would have thought that hundreds of years of dogs tracking people would have proved this, but it's nice to know that science has figured it out officially now.
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First of all, tracking is not identifying. Second of all, if two people have the same scent but non-overlapping movement paths, you can successfully track the one whose path you're on, so ability to track is not a very pure way of measuring smell-based distinguishability. Thirdly, dogs probably have vastly different ability levels for tracking by smell vs. tracking by fingerprint due to the two leaving different amounts of trail material. Fourthly throughout these years, have comparisons been made between smell-dogs and print-dogs? And fifthly, just because the market uses dogs to track on smell doesn't mean it's the best way to even track people: there may be market inertia factors and/or cost/benefit ratios that favor using smelling dogs.
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Science has not figured out that hunting by smell works. They've found out that odors are better than fingerprints for identifying people. If it had gone the other way, should we all go and replace our dogs? No, they probably work best in practice, due to better hardware support for the odor-based tracking.
I drink a lot (a fifth of vodka every two days, on average). One of my coworkers, out of 12+, claims she can smell the hell out of it on me. I shower each morning and two different Axe products are part of my showering repertoire. While I don't doubt that I sweat out some portion of the previous night's alcohol during the course of the work day, I'm curious where the threshold is.
I put back about 375ml of vodka per night - mixed with various other beverages, typically Diet Mt. Dew, a random Gatorade, or one of Ocean Spray's delicious juices. Some nights I have no vodka, but drink 6 to 12 beers instead, depending upon the brand. And from time to time, such as last night, I'll get to sleep simply by virtue of 100mg Diphenhydramine HCl without having a drop of alcohol. This coworker swears she can still smell it, even after I've gone 48 hours and 2 or more showers since my last drink.
I suspect that certain people have unusually strong senses of smell. We know that dogs do. I hope that I don't have any offensive BO at work, and I'd doubly hope that if I did, someone would tell me about it. That only a single coworker has mentioned her ability to "smell the booze on me" makes me paranoid, but it also makes me wonder. Is she hypersensitive, or are all of my other coworkers picking up on it and just being too polite to say anything? Knowing most of my coworkers very fondly, I suspect the former.
Dogs have never liked me - or conversely, they've always liked me too much. To me, canines exhibit excessive hyperactivity. That's why I have a cat instead. She might be the boss of my house, but the only time she freaks out is when I drop some fresh catnip somewhere nearby.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
You people. First you complain that Idle isn't any good, and now you're complaining that it shouldn't be any good?
No, I'm complaining that there is already a section for this article, it's called "Science", and that i feel people are artificially putting this in the wrong category to make it seem more legitimate.
The idea behind the idle section is to have articles that are sort of pointless - that's just the point, i'm not ragging on it. Thing is, i don't like that idea, i think it's stupid.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
They've also been using the section for "oddball" stories, of which this clearly fits.
In fact, with the exception of a few YouTube videos that showed up early in the life of Idle, most of the stuff posted in Idle that's made it to the front page is stuff that would have been posted on Slashdot anyway, but under a different category.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
I'm not sure about odor on men (as I'm not interested in men, thank you), but odor on each woman is quite distinctive if you have intimate contact with her. That's only from personal experience (anecdote), and by no means a scientific study.
The five women I have (or had) intimate relationship with, I can distinguish each one of them with my eyes blind-folded. A woman's distinctive smell are usually from the cheek, on the neck, from behind the ear, on the lips, etc. It's definitely distinctive, but can it be used as a unique identifier, I'm not sure.
Thinking about it, each woman having a distinctive oder is quite natural, as this is the same thing as on other animals. After all these years of evolution, humans do not rely on smell anymore to mate or to find a mate, therefore, it has become less important and less obvious. But I think it's still there, if you pay attention to it.
Didn't the 4th Alien movie (the one with winona ryder) kinda show one of the problems with this?
Does idle base its story submissions solely by how well the content matches up to whatever pictures they happen have lying around?
In Berlin, Germany during the cold war era, the Stasi (Big Brother Police) knew this! They could track individuals with smell. In fact they have a room FILLED with little jars of every citizens' personal smell! I've been there and seen the rooms. They had special dogs trained for this too. They would open the jar and let the dog smell some... then go out into the city and find this person, they had a good success rate too which is kind of surprising. They would even track people by spraying different pheromones on their target.
"These findings indicate that biologically-based odorprints, like fingerprints, could be a reliable way to identify individuals"
Slightly off-topic, but since when do fingerprints qualify as a reliable way to identify a person? They can easily be faked, and once they are, there's no way to revoke them. It's like having a really bad passport...
While this article may be misplaced, I'd say that while regular /. stories are "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters," Idle /. could be considered "News for Nerds, Stuff that Doesn't Matter," but that you still might find interesting.
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