The complexity of the odours issue arises from the sensory nature of smell. From the evolutionary point of view olfaction is one of the oldest senses, allowing for seeking food, recognizing danger or communication: human olfaction is a protective sense as it allows the detection of potential illnesses or infections by taking into account the odour pleasantness/unpleasantness. Odours are mixtures of light and small molecules that, coming in contact with various human sensory systems, also at very low concentrations in the inhaled air, are able to stimulate an anatomical response: the experienced perception is the odour. Odour assessment is a key point in some industrial production processes (i.e., food, beverages, etc.) and it is acquiring steady importance in unusual technological fields (i.e., indoor air quality); this issue mainly concerns the environmental impact of various industrial activities (i.e., tanneries, refineries, slaughterhouses, distilleries, civil and industrial wastewater treatment plants, landfills and composting plants) as sources of olfactory nuisances, the top air pollution complaint. Although the human olfactory system is still regarded as the most important and effective “analytical instrument” for odour evaluation, the demand for more objective analytical methods, along with the discovery of materials with chemo-electronic properties, has boosted the development of sensor-based machine olfaction potentially imitating the biological system. This review examines the state of the art of both human and instrumental sensing currently used for the detection of odours. The olfactometric techniques employing a panel of trained experts are discussed and the strong and weak points of odour assessment through human detection are highlighted. The main features and the working principles of modern electronic noses (E-Noses) are then described, focusing on their better performances for environmental analysis. Odour emission monitoring carried out through both the techniques is finally reviewed in order to show the complementary responses of human and instrumental sensing.

The impact of knowledge transfer induced by universities on economy, society, and culture is widely acknowledged; nevertheless, this aspect is often neglected by university rankings. Here, we considered three of the most popular global university rankings and specific knowledge transfer indicators by U-multirank, a European ranking system launched by the European Commission, in order to answer to the following research question: how do the world top universities, evaluated according to global university rankings, perform from a knowledge transfer point of view? To this aim, the top universities have been compared with the others through the calculation of a Global Performance Indicator in Knowledge Transfer (GPI KT), a hierarchical clustering, and an outlier analysis. The results show that the universities best rated by global rankings do not always perform as well from knowledge transfer point of view. By combining the obtained results, it is possible to state that only 5 universities (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, CALTEC), among the top in the world, exhibit a high-level performance in knowledge transfer activities. For a better understanding of the success factors and best practices in knowledge transfer, a brief description of the 5 cited universities, in terms of organization of technology transfer service, relationship with business, entrepreneurship programs, and, more generally, third mission activities, is provided. A joint reading of the results suggests that the most popular global university rankings probably fail to effectively photograph third mission activities because they can manifest in a variety of forms, due to the intrinsic and intangible nature of third mission variables, which are difficult to quantify with simple and few indicators.