Olfaction is ingrained into the fabric of our daily lives and constitutes an integral part of our perceptual reality. Within this reality, there are crossmodal interactions and sensory expectations; understanding how olfaction interacts with other sensory modalities is crucial for augmenting interactive experiences with more advanced multisensorial capabilities. This knowledge will eventually lead to better designs, more engaging experiences, and enhancing the perceived quality of experience. Toward this end, the authors investigated a range of crossmodal correspondences between ten olfactory stimuli and different modalities (angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, pleasantness, pitch, colors, musical genres, and emotional dimensions) using a sample of 68 observers. Consistent crossmodal correspondences were obtained in all cases, including our novel modality (the smoothness of texture). These associations are most likely mediated by both the knowledge of an odor’s identity and the underlying hedonic ratings: the knowledge of an odor’s identity plays a role when judging the emotional and musical dimensions but not for the angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, perceived pleasantness, or pitch. Overall, hedonics was the most dominant mediator of crossmodal correspondences.

The phenomenology of synaesthesia provides numerous cognitive benefits, which could be used towards augmenting interactive experiences with more refined multisensorial capabilities leading to more engaging and enriched experiences, better designs, and more transparent human-machine interfaces. In this study, we report a novel framework for the transformation of odours into the visual domain by applying the ideology from synaesthesia, to a low cost, portable, augmented reality / virtual reality system. The benefits of generating an artificial form of synesthesia are outlined and implemented using a custom made electronic nose to gather information about odour sources which is then sent to a mobile computing engine for characterisation, classification, and visualisation. The odours are visualised in the form of coloured 2D abstract shapes in real-time. Our results show that our affordable system has the potential to increase human odour discrimination comparable to that of natural syneasthesia highlighting the prospects for augmenting human-machine interfaces with an artificial form of this phenomenon.

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A novel strategy for the direct analysis of non-conjugated steroids in water using paper spray mass spectrometry (PS-MS) has been developed. PS-MS was used in the identification and quantification of non-conjugated (free) steroids in fish tank water samples. Data shown herein indicates that individual amounts of free steroids can be detected in aqua as low as; 0.17 ng/µL, 0.039 ng/µL, 0.43 ng/µL, 0.0076 ng/µL for aldosterone, corticosterone, cortisol, and β-estrone, respectively, and with an average relative standard deviation of ca. < 10% in the positive ion mode using PS-MS/MS. Direct detection of free steroids in a raw water mixture, from aquaculture, without prior sample preparation is demonstrated. The presence of free steroids released in fish water samples was confirmed via tandem mass spectrometry using collision-induced dissociation. this approach shows promise for rapid and direct water quality monitoring to provide a holistic assessment of non-conjugated steroids in aqua.

10Crossmodal correspondences are the associations between apparently distinct stimuli in different 11 sensory modalities. These associations, albeit surprising, are generally shared in most of the population. 12Olfaction is ingrained in the fabric of our daily life and constitutes an integral part of our perceptual 13 reality, with olfaction being more commonly used in the entertainment and analytical domains, it is 14 crucial to uncover the robust correspondences underlying common aromatic compounds. Towards this 15 end, we investigated an aggregate of crossmodal correspondences between ten olfactory stimuli and 16 other modalities (angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, pleasantness, pitch, colours, musical 17 genres and emotional dimensions) using a large sample of 68 observers. We uncover the 18 correspondences between these modalities and extent of these associations with respect to the explicit 19 knowledge of the respective aromatic compound. The results revealed the robustness of prior studies, 20 as well as, contributions towards olfactory integration between an aggregate of other dimensions. The 21 knowledge of an odour's identity coupled with the multisensory perception of the odours indicates that 22 these associations, for the most part, are relatively robust and do not rely on explicit knowledge of the 23 odour. Through principal component analysis of the perceptual ratings, new cross-model mediations 24 have been uncovered between odours and their intercorrelated sensory dimensions. Our results 25 demonstrate a collective of associations between olfaction and other dimensions, potential cross modal 26mediations via exploratory factor analysis and the robustness of these correspondence with respect to 27 the explicit knowledge of an odour. We anticipate the findings reported in this paper could be used as 28 a psychophysical framework aiding in a collective of applications ranging from olfaction enhanced 29 multimedia to marketing.