It is a gadget straight out of a science fiction story: a machine that can record a smell and play it back to you. Engineers hope a successful smell-recording device could be useful for online shopping -- allowing customers to smell products before buying them -- or to add another dimension to television. Pambuk Somboon, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, who is leading the development of the smell-recording gadget, told New Scientist magazine that while aroma generators have been produced in the past, they have failed commercially because the number of smells they can produce has always been limited. In his system, there are no pre-prepared smells, just 15 chemical-sensing electric noses that can pick up a wide range of smells.
■ Russia
Russians face `dry' summer
Wine lovers are facing a parched summer after a bureaucratic foul-up has left shelves empty in liquor stores nationwide. All imported wines and spirits with old excise labels must be removed from sale by tomorrow, but there has been a delay in the introduction of the new excise stamps. The glitch occurred when too few excise labels were provided too slowly to importers, and new barcode readers were not installed in time.
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