Artificial tongue's nanoscale "tastebuds" can sort real whisky from counterfeits more than 99% of the time

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/07/quality-nanoplasmonic-tongues.html

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Seems like this must already be a band name… :thinking:

Impressive. Though I do wonder about the 1 out of 100 people they may falsely accuse of counterfeiting…

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Artificial tongue

I had a boss with one, what a reptile he was.

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It’s a really cool technique that’s been under development for a long time. The biggest bottleneck seems to have been preparing a chip for SPR analysis: having to make a new chip for each thing you want to measure. There have been some successes in more multi-purpose and re-usable chips, though, so we may see this tech break out into other domains fairly soon instead of its current limitation in chemical and materials sciences. I’d love to eventually have one with a surface coated in all our olfactory receptors to precisely profile the way different places smell at different times. There are so many amazing varieties of petrichor that seem to arise from differences in local plant life and associated terpene production and the soil absorbance characteristics.

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It never occurred to me, but I guess fake Scotch really is an issue when you get up to pricey rare bottles. I assume if you’re buying cheap or mid-priced whisky at a respected store it’s not likely to be an issue.

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I’m going to have to perform my own comparison testing on this. Can’t be too safe.

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So when Univ of Glasgow licenses this tech to Whisky Brand X, this means that whiskey makers A thru W, Y and Z will be deemed counterfeits, correct?

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Count me disappointed Papasan.
I fully expected to read that your non-artificial tongue was tasting whisky right now.
:wink:

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Ahhh… That explains it: Odds are, the bar doesn’t serve real scotch!

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Fun Fact: Phil Wyatt founded Wyatt Technologies to introduce Multi-Angle Light Scattering (MALS) instruments for the analysis and characterization of wine.

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I look forward to the complete legal shitshow when this is applied to olive oil

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Saw a post on BB about whiskey, instantly clicked the comments for the @Papasan Perspective

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Damn, I just hunted down a link to post the same thing!

Bimetallic Nanoplasmonic Tongue is the name of my new band.

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I don’t understand devotion to rare “high end” anything if it’s indistinguishable from something else. But hey, if you want to spend your money I guess you should get what you’re paying for, even if it’s special-ness is dubious.

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It does seem very Emporer’s New Clothes to me. Especially since, in the case of wine, blind taste tests don’t really seem to show the value of top end wine. Rather, people learn to like a set of characteristics that they learn are to be valued. And wine connoisseurs can virtue signal to each other by agreeing how awesome expensive wine is.

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I have an artificial penis and it can’t distinguish between anything. Must be a millennial’s design…

I figured I’d take a chance on this after I used the word “moi*t” in reference to smoked brisket on a BBQ thread and it was censored.

Replace * with “s”. I have no idea what is wrong with that word?

"

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You mean “MOlST?”

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I would post a music video by King Missle in reply but I don’t think the minimum number of days has past since I last posted it. :wink:

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