http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IxU-MZ12VE&feature=plcp Anti-mining NGOs have known for awhile that a properly-trained rat can smell explosives and signal the threat's location to a human handler. Now the US Army Research Center has contracted a Virginia firm, Barron Associates, to look into training rats to accompany American soldiers. Stars and Stripes reports that two years ago, the Pentagon sent researchers to evaluate work being done by de-mining charity APOPO, which used rats to find thousands of land mines buried across Mozambique, recovering from a decade of civil war. (The ... Read More
Desperately Seeking Landmines
March 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
On his knees in a field of freshly cropped weeds, protected by a Plexiglas visor and a bulletproof smock, Mohammed Inazario-Mendes digs carefully in sun-baked dirt. He loosens a little with a long-handled steel spoon, then scoops it out with his hands. Then he does it again. Inch by inch, he painstakingly advances a little trench toward the spot a foot away marked with three red sticks. Inazario-Mendes has good reason to work slowly. Just this morning, two landmines were unearthed only yards from where he's digging. His job is to find out if the object that triggered his metal detector — ... Read More
A New Clue to Finding Land Mines
April 29, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The classic detective game of CLUE™ has taught the world many things — that a candlestick is a deadly weapon, for one — but this might be taking things a bit far: Duke University engineers, writing in the journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, say the game can teach robots how to navigate minefields and find hidden explosives. (Put a picture of that on the box cover, Hasbro.) "One night we were playing CLUE™ at the kitchen table, and it struck me," said Sylvia Ferrari, director of Duke's Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls, in a press release ... Read More
Mine Heir
January 7, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Today in Mice recently sounded the alarm about calls by researchers to move beyond the mouse model of studying human disease and begin using vast databases of human health information — or larger animals like pigs and dogs — in our quest to cure the ailments that afflict us. But before anyone grows too distraught over the prospect of out-of-work rodents (or bloggers), consider this: a Belgian organization is using rats to alleviate two of Africa's greatest scourges: land mines and tuberculosis. Antwerp-based APOPO has trained African giant pouched rats to use their highly developed ... Read More
