Olfaction Warfare


Book Description

The use of vision and audition in stealth applications is well recognized; however, other perceptual senses can also play a valuable role. This report discusses the sense of smell (olfaction), its use in nature and everyday life, and its potential applications in military and stealth operations. The sense of smell has largely been overlooked and underutilized in warfare, being restricted to crowd control and deterrent applications. However, the olfactory dimension can be a promising addition to other Department of Defense applications, such as stealth operations, deception, misdirection, and force projection. Further research into olfaction is needed to achieve these aims. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory's (ARL's) Special Report ARL-SR-242 Owning the Environment: Stealth Soldier—Research Outline (May 2012) presented an outline of the visual and auditory research needed to support future military stealth operations, misdirection, and deception activities. The current report expands upon ARL-SR-242, extending its scope into the realm of olfaction. This report discusses the olfactory sense in everyday experience, nature, industry, and history, and proposes future directions for the use of olfaction in military operations.




Sensory Warfare in the Global Cold War


Book Description

The longest political conflict of the twentieth century, the Cold War, was carried out on the human senses—and through them. Largely conducted through nonlethal methods, it was a war of competing cultures, politics, and covert operations. While propaganda reached targets through vision and hearing, sensory warfare also exploited taste, touch, smell, and pain. This volume is the first to explore the sensory aspect of the Cold War and how this warfare changed contemporary perception of the war. The authors highlight the global dimension of sensory warfare, examining battlegrounds around the world and across different phases of the conflict, including “cold” and “hot” warfare—both covert and overt. Case studies highlight the role of taste in Western food deliveries to Eastern Europe; olfaction in Poland, at the Iron Curtain, and in the Vietnam War; sonic warfare in Berlin, in Romania, and at the China-Taiwan “aquatic frontier”; vision in the Maoist Cultural Revolution, Spain, and the Soviet-Afghan war; haptics in the German military; and drugs, pain, and sensory deprivation in intelligence operations in both Hungary and the United States. In its wide-ranging treatment, this volume offers an illuminating new perspective on the Cold War and deepens our understanding of the sensory aspects of current and future conflicts. Sensory Warfare in the Global Cold War will be of interest to students and scholars of sensory studies, Cold War studies, twentieth-century history, and military history. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Cyril Cordoba, Mark Fenemore, Walter E. Grunden, Dayton Lekner, José Manuel López Torán, Markus Mirschel, Victoria Phillips, Carsten Richter, Andreea Deciu Ritivoi, Christy Spackman, and Stephanie Weismann.




The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege


Book Description

Historical accounts of major events have almost always relied upon what those who were there witnessed. Nowhere is this truer than in the nerve-shattering chaos of warfare, where sight seems to confer objective truth and acts as the basis of reconstruction. In The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege, historian Mark M. Smith considers how all five senses, including sight, shaped the experience of the Civil War and thus its memory, exploring its full sensory impact on everyone from the soldiers on the field to the civilians waiting at home. From the eardrum-shattering barrage of shells announcing the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter; to the stench produced by the corpses lying in the mid-summer sun at Gettysburg; to the siege of Vicksburg, once a center of Southern culinary aesthetics and starved into submission, Smith recreates how Civil War was felt and lived. Relying on first-hand accounts, Smith focuses on specific senses, one for each event, offering a wholly new perspective. At Bull Run, the similarities between the colors of the Union and Confederate uniforms created concern over what later would be called friendly fire and helped decide the outcome of the first major battle, simply because no one was quite sure they could believe their eyes. He evokes what it might have felt like to be in the HL Hunley submarine, in which eight men worked cheek by jowl in near-total darkness in a space 48 inches high, 42 inches wide. Often argued to be the first total war, the Civil War overwhelmed the senses because of its unprecedented nature and scope, rendering sight less reliable and, Smith shows, forcefully engaging the nonvisual senses. Sherman's March was little less than a full-blown assault on Southern sense and sensibility, leaving nothing untouched and no one unaffected. Unique, compelling, and fascinating, The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege, offers readers way to experience the Civil War with fresh eyes.




Philosophy of Olfactory Perception


Book Description

This book reconsiders the major current topics in the philosophy of perception using olfaction as the paradigm sense. The author reveals how many of the most basic concepts of philosophy of perception are based on peculiarities of visual perception not found in other modalities, and addresses how different the philosophy of perception would be if based on olfaction. The book addresses several aspects of olfaction, including perceptual qualities, percepts, olfaction and cognitive processes, and consciousness. The first part of the book considers perception with respect to its ability to guide behaviors and to make information available to cognitive processes. The author continues by addressing the differences between conscious and non-conscious olfactory perception, and presents an argument for an important role of attention in conscious processes. The book concludes by discussing the function of conscious brain processes and their link to guiding behaviors in complex situations.




The Neurology of Olfaction


Book Description

"Written by two experts in the field, this book provides information useful to physicians for assessing and managing chemosensory disorders - with appropriate case-histories - and summarizes the current scientific knowledge of human olfaction. It will be of particular interest to neurologists, otolaryngologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists."--BOOK JACKET.




Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance


Book Description

This book claims a political value for olfactory artworks by situating them squarely in the contemporary moment of various forms of political resistance. Each chapter presents the current research and art practices of an international group of artists and writers from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Thailand, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The book brings together new thinking on the potential for olfactory art to critique and produce modes of engagement that challenge the still-powerful hegemonic realities of the twenty-first century, particularly the dominance of vision as opposed to other sensory modalities. The book will be of interest to scholars working in contemporary art, art history, visual culture, olfactory studies, performance studies, and politics of activism.




Introduction to Machine Olfaction Devices


Book Description

Introduction to Machine Olfaction Devices discusses the various aspects of a MOD device, from historical approaches to state-of-the-art technologies. This book also covers the mechanism in dealing and detecting gases, odor, and aroma. Problems and solutions relevant to present day design have been outlined as well as a step-by-step guide to Machine Olfaction Device (MOD) design. Sensors and gas systems, along with polymers and certain manufacturing processes, have been discussed, together with other relevant materials for the MOD process and functions including comparison and validations, data processing, data analysis, MOD new design, micro systems, and monitoring systems. Aimed at developing a novel and improved MOD with more efficient on-board data processing capability for monitoring applications, this book will help you to design an MOD with a faster stabilizing base line; a quicker sample result display; an ability to use ambient air; a low power consumption; and the ability to deal with different varieties of organic/inorganic samples. With a focus on the most important and relevant aspects of designing MODs which currently require a solution, topics covered include MOD and market issues, cost, technical issues, and MOD applications. With a huge range of potential applications, this book will be of special interest to those working (or studying) in this field at every level, from Biomedical, Energy, or Electrical Engineers, to Computer or Food Scientists. Introduction to Machine Olfaction Devices discusses the various aspects of a MOD device, from historical approaches to state-of-the-art technologies. This book also covers the mechanism in dealing and detecting gases, odor, and aroma. Problems and solutions relevant to present day design have been outlined as well as a step-by-step guide to Machine Olfaction Device (MOD) design. Sensors and gas systems, along with polymers and certain manufacturing processes, have been discussed, together with other relevant materials for the MOD process and functions including comparison and validations, data processing, data analysis, MOD new design, micro systems, and monitoring systems. Aimed at developing a novel and improved MOD with more efficient on-board data processing capability for monitoring applications, this book will help you to design an MOD with a faster stabilizing base line; a quicker sample result display; an ability to use ambient air; a low power consumption; and the ability to deal with different varieties of organic/inorganic samples. With a focus on the most important and relevant aspects of designing MODs which currently require a solution, topics covered include MOD and market issues, cost, technical issues, and MOD applications. With a huge range of potential applications, this book will be of special interest to those working (or studying) in this field at every level, from Biomedical, Energy, or Electrical Engineers, to Computer or Food Scientists. Focuses on the most important and relevant aspects of designing machine olfaction devices (MOD) which currently require a solution Topics covered include: MOD and market issues; MOD and cost; MOD and technical issues; MOD applications




Animals and Human Society


Book Description

Animals and Human Society provides a solid, scientific, research-based background to advance understanding of how animals impact humans. Animals have had profound effects on people from the earliest times, ranging from zoonotic diseases, to the global impact of livestock, poultry and fish production, to the influences of human-associated animals on the environment (on extinctions, air and water pollution, greenhouse gases, etc.), to the importance of animals in human evolution and hunter -gatherer communities.As a resource for both science and non-science, Animals and Human Society can be used as a text for courses in Animals and Human Society or Animal Science, or as supplemental material for Introduction to Animal Science. It offers foundational background to those who may have little background in animal agriculture and have focused interest on companion animals and horses. The work introduces livestock production (including poultry and aquaculture) but also includes coverage of companion and lab animals. In addition, animal behavior and animal perception are covered.Animals and Human Society is likewise an excellent resource for researchers, academics, or students newly entering a related field or coming from another discipline and needing foundational information, as well as interested laypersons looking to augment their knowledge on the many impacts of animals in human society. - Features research-based and pedagogically sound content, with learning goals and textboxes to provide key information - Challenges readers to consider issues based on facts rather than polemics - Poses ethical questions and raises overall societal impacts - Balances traditional animal science with companion animals, animal biology, zoonotic diseases, animal products, environmental impacts and all aspects of human/animal interaction







SMELL


Book Description

Although somewhat marginal in relation to the other senses, smell is the most potent way of anchoring ourselves to the world. We subconsciously find our place in it by sniffing our body, the body of the one next to us, the room in which we are, the culture with which we are familiar. There is an incessant olfactory flow consisting of bodies, human and nonhuman, that are agents of generation, consumption, diffusion, reproduction and dissolution of odours. As they move or pause, as they cluster with others or try to move away, these bodies constantly partake in this olfactory flow, this dense planetary swirl that leaves nothing outside. The law aims at presenting itself as rational and objective. Smell, on the other hand, is one of the least integrated senses in the legal edifice, in comparison to, say, seeing and hearing. This can be attributed mainly to the fact that sense-making of smell and law are different, even antithetical. Smell operates undercurrent, tickling the olfactory antennas of individual and collective bodies while habitually hiding behind other sensory volumes. Law, on the other hand, has an interest in appearing present, universal, constant. Olfactory sense-making relies on its elusiveness; legal sense-making invests in its obviousness. Yet, the two can interact in most unexpected ways, as this volume amply shows. If anything, smell airs the way in which law conceptualises and contextualises its own actuality. Smell brings law forth by allowing it to show its underbelly, its elusive sense-making that is invariably sacrificed in preference to the necessity of legal impressions of constancy. However, smell’s fragmentary, discontinuous and unstable nature, despite all the ordering that goes to it, poses a peculiar challenge to the law. This volume sets out to investigate this juncture.