Olores.org would like to wish all its readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Again this media has grown beyond our wildest expectations. In terms of readership, this year we got over 49000 page loads, with over 26 000 unique visitors and around 4 000 returning visitors. This has been made possible thanks to your dedication to reading and supporting us, so thanks, we owe you another one, again ;-).

   This time, I would like to thank to the companies that advertise in this site, they make possible that this portal exists:

   I would like to thank one more year to LABAQUA/AQUALOGY. They have been supporting olores.org from the very beginning and their trust along these years has made this website happen. Thank you again guys!

   In addition, I would also like to express our gratitude to ECOMÉTRIKA who have been there also in the last 5 years. We organised together with the Ministry of Environment a very successful First International Seminar on Environmental Odour Management in Santiago, Chile, We got a full room and all the inscriptions available (170 participants) were booked up.

   Last but not least, we would like to thank to ODOURNET, for trusting the work done in this website and for all the support shown in all the events organized by olores.org.

   This year we have been in the last conference of the WEF 2014 Odors and Air Pollutants Conference, May 31 – June 3, 2014, Miami Florida. This time this conference was a bit more focused on odours and I congratulate to the organizers for a very well done event. We got the opportunity of meeting the old colleagues and some new people who have been very inspiring.

Conference WEF, March, Miami, June 2014	Conference NOSE 2014, Venice, September 2014

   We also did not miss the opportunity to attend the NOSE2014. 4th International Conference on Environmental Odour Monitoring & Control 14-17 September 2014, Venice, Italy.

   Check all the videos we took in 2014 in our Youtube channel.

   This year 2014 we have shared some very important news. In February 2014, the Conference on Best Practice in Odour Control Management took place in Nottingham, UK and in Panaji-Goa, India, Odournet Holding India Pvt.Ltd. organized the First Symposium "The World of Odour: Sensory Analysis and Consumer Perception – assessing & optimizing the olfactory and molecular attributes of products & materials".

   In February also, Uniphos Envirotronic Pvt. Ltd., a group company of UPL Ltd. (formerly known as United Phosphorus Ltd.) a leading manufacturer of gas detection equipment, announced its acquisition of the colorimetric detector tube business from MSA Auer GmbH, Germany, a subsidiary of MSA, based in the USA.

   In March, the OlfactoNetwork and the company OlfactoExpert Inc. organized the «ODEUR2014 QUEBEC», the first seminar in North America entirely devoted to odours, which covered everything from quantifying odours to dealing with them, both technically and legally. On March 13 and 14, experts, lawyers, academics, industrialists, and specialists from Europe and the United States were at the Auberge Saint-Antoine, located at 8 Saint-Antoine Street in Québec, for two days of work and discussion.

Conference in Santiago, Chile, March 2014

   And also in March we organized in Santiago, Chile the First International Seminar of Odours in the Environment. It would be easy to say that olores.org had a big part on this successful Seminar, but to be honest nothing further from the truth, Ecometrika a Chilean company with over 60 people working exclusively on odour management took the lead here of the organization. In addition, the Ministry of Environment of Chile did a huge effort promoting this Seminar. The scientific committee did an excellent job, correcting and reviewing manuscripts in both English and Spanish. You can still download the presentations here. Articles, videos and presentations are publicly available (still a few to publish, sorry!). Together we have also organized the second CALPUFF course in Santiago, Chile 3rd March 2014.

   In May the Clean Air Society of Australia & New Zealand organized a Course on Odour Science & Management in in Auckland, New Zealand. This course provided training in odour science, regulation, management and control. Case studies and practical demonstrations of modelling software and sampling equipment were be used to illustrate applications and supplement lectures and discussion forum. At around the same time, the Technical university of Federico Santa María of Chile and OSA organized a very successful Round table on Advances and Experiences in odour management in the Region of O'Higgins in Rancagua, Chile.

   In June took place the 6th meeting of the Working Group (WG) 2 that deals with odours within the CEN Technical Committee (TC) 264 "air quality" in Copenhagen. This revision process comes as a necessary step after 4 years of the publication of a Norm CEN.

   The company Scentroid made a few free online courses. The last one was an Online Course on “Odour Reporting and Evaluation”, but there were a few more in 2014. Stay tuned in their website and in their LinkedIn group.

  In another order of things, after 16 years of ecoma/Odournet in the Havighorster Weg 12 in Honigsee, Odournet moved in July their production and workshop to a new and more spacious factory building with its own production area and a new calibration laboratory in Kiel, Germany. The Odournet International Comparison of Olfactometry 2014 included this time a complex odour. This enabled participating laboratories to not only verify their performance characteristics on the n-butanol reference, but also on an actual unknown complex 'real world' odorant mixture. In addition, one more year, Odournet GmbH organized the sixth Interlaboratory Comparison for the Automotive Guideline VDA 270 - Determination of odour behaviour of materials used in automotive interiors.

   In July, there were a few changes that will probably have a positive effect on the frequency of release of the CALPUFF versions. The company Exponent got control of CALPUFF along with the CALPUFF web site (www.src.com). As an introduction to understand the changes that recently happened in the development of CALPUFF, we should go back more or less 30 years ago to the origins of the group that started this project: The Atmospheric Studies Group (ASG). Read more about this very interesting story here.

   The olfactometer TO8/TO9 did not have any serious evolution in the last years and we were wondering if there was a halt in the development of the well known TO series olfactometers. However, the odournet group released the new olfactometerTO evolution the next step of the olfactometers TO series by Odournet.

   Scentroid, a very active Canadian manufacturer also presented in the recent NOSE 2014 in Venice their new wind tunnel, the SW60. This very light weight wind tunnel for sampling odours is made of aluminium/composite panels and it has a coating inside of PTFE. In addition, the wind tunnel comes with an internal air supply and tubing with an internal rechargeable battery to do the surface sampling in passive sources easier.

   In September the The XXIVth edition of International Conference on European Chemoreception Research Organization (ECRO 2014) was held in Dijon, France and it was organized by the Luc Penicaud "Centre des Sciences du Gout et de l'Alimentation (CSGA)"

   In December, just a few days ago concluded the International Congress of the DOS2014 in Tokyo, Japan. I hope it was as good as the first Congress in Berlin.

   In the last NOSE 2014 conference we had another news that will probably change things in the future in the company Odournet. The co-founder Ton van Harreveld stepped down after 25 years as CEO of the Odournet group. This news does not mean that he will abandon the group as he will be still part of the board, but this time he will be more involved in the things he enjoys more more as chief innovation officer in the Research and Development field. Simon Rützel Grünberg, a very well known guy in this area took over as CEO.

  We see each other soon in our next Conference in November 2015 in Bilbao, Spain. Meanwhile, I wish you enjoy this time with your family and friends!