Chemical sensing with familiar devices

Computers and mobile phones are ubiquitous devices that are continuously evolving and becoming ever more sophisticated. Eventually, they will constitute a global network of casual terminals that are geographically traceable and able to capture images and sounds of increasing quality. Other target inputs such as odors[1] or (bio)chemical parameters[2-4] are, however, more difficult to detect on such a massive scale, particularly with a generic type of instrumentation. Such a possibility would enable, for example, health diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and food quality assessments on a personalized level and also to feedback determinations of the same parameters to the network. Certainly, it would be a significant advantage if this was feasible as a natural extension of the capabilities of familiar and already well distributed devices.