Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death among men. It is an asymptomatic and slow growing tumour, which starts occurring in young men, but can be detected only around the age of 40–50. Although its long latency period and potential curability make prostate cancer a perfect candidate for screening programs, the current procedure lacks in specificity. Researchers are rising to the challenge of developing innovative tools able of detecting the disease during its early stage that is the most curable. In recent years, the interest in characterisation of biological fluids aimed at the identification of tumour-specific compounds has increased significantly, since cell neoplastic transformation causes metabolic alterations leading to volatile organic compounds release. In the scientific literature, different approaches have been proposed. Many studies focus on the identification of a cancer-characteristic “odour fingerprint” emanated from biological samples through the application of sensorial or senso-instrumental analyses, others suggest a chemical characterisation of biological fluids with the aim of identifying prostate cancer (PCa)-specific biomarkers. This paper focuses on the review of literary studies in the field of prostate cancer diagnosis, in order to provide an overview of innovative methods based on the analysis of urine, thereby comparing them with the traditional diagnostic procedures.

The electronic nose is able to provide useful information through the analysis of the volatile organic compounds in body fluids, such as exhaled breath, urine and blood. This paper focuses on the review of electronic nose studies and applications in the specific field of medical diagnostics based on the analysis of the gaseous headspace of human urine, in order to provide a broad overview of the state of the art and thus enhance future developments in this field. The research in this field is rather recent and still in progress, and there are several aspects that need to be investigated more into depth, not only to develop and improve specific electronic noses for different diseases, but also with the aim to discover and analyse the connections between specific diseases and the body fluids odour. Further research is needed to improve the results obtained up to now; the development of new sensors and data processing methods should lead to greater diagnostic accuracy thus making the electronic nose an effective tool for early detection of different kinds of diseases, ranging from infections to tumours or exposure to toxic agents.

Despite initial enthusiasm towards electronic noses and their possible application in different fields, and quite a lot of promising results, several criticalities emerge from most published research studies, and, as a matter of fact, the diffusion of electronic noses in real-life applications is still very limited. In general, a first step towards large-scale-diffusion of an analysis method, is standardization. The aim of this paper is describing the experimental procedure adopted in order to evaluate electronic nose performances, with the final purpose of establishing minimum performance requirements, which is considered to be a first crucial step towards standardization of the specific case of electronic nose application for environmental odor monitoring at receptors. Based on the experimental results of the performance testing of a commercialized electronic nose type with respect to three criteria (i.e., response invariability to variable atmospheric conditions, instrumental detection limit, and odor classification accuracy), it was possible to hypothesize a logic that could be adopted for the definition of minimum performance requirements, according to the idea that these are technologically achievable.

This study concerns flueless fireplaces powered by liquid or gel bioethanol based fuels. These devices have a pleasant aesthetic design and can be used in indoor environments; in particular, they do not need any connection to a stack to evacuate the flue gases.This work evaluates the polluting impact of the mentioned fireplaces, with a special focus on their odour emissions, in order to assess the environmental impact of these items and to provide the European Commission information useful to define the guidelines for a dedicated legislation. For these reasons, a series of experimental tests, structured with well-defined steps, alternating operation (combustion) and shutdown phases, was performed for several fireplaces.The concentration trends of both the main combustion products and by-products as well as the odour were monitored; furthermore, specific odour emission factors (OEFs) were calculated. The combustion pollutants were mainly released during the operation phase, while the most significant odour emissions occurred during shutdown. The average OEFs reached values between 40 and 110 [100 ouE kJ-1] during the shutdown, but they were below 10 [100 ouE kJ-1] during the operation periods. It was found that the extent of odour emissions depends crucially on the burner design and geometry of each fireplace in particular, the air-fuel contact surface is the most relevant parameter.Moreover, this study proved that the electronic nose can be a valid additional instrument in activities aimed at evaluating the indoor air quality, and considering its peculiarities, the idea of using it not only as an odour detector, but also as an integrated device in air ventilation systems for indoor environments, is both interesting and achievable

The ammonia loss through Nalophan TM bags has been studied. Ammonia was chosen as target compound in order to be representative of odorous molecules of small dimensions. The losses observed for storage conditions and times as allowed by the reference standard for dynamic olfactometry (EN 13725:2003) indicate that odour concentration values due to the presence of small molecules may be significantly underestimated if samples are not analysed immediately after sampling. The diffusion coefficient of ammonia through the Nalophan TM film was evaluated using the Fick's law, and it turned out to be equal to 2.38E−12 (m 2 /s). The results and their theoretical interpretation indicate that concentration losses due to ammonia diffusion through the Nalophan TM film can be decreased by using large bags and filling them up to their maximum capacity.