Rats with GPS backpacks prepare to sniff out landmines Scientists in the US have developed a novel system for detecting landmines by training rats equipped with GPS and wireless rucksacks to sniff out explosives and map them for destruction. A team of boffins at Bucknell University has trained the Rattus recruits to identify the chemicals that seep into the ground from land mines …
The problem is not the US. And especially not the UK, any more (I'm British Army). As another poster said (and was downvoted for!) the US would sign the Ottawa Convention if an exception was made for the Korean border. People won't agree to that because the US is EEVIL and North Korea is poor and misunderstood. So US-bashing politics is costing the lives of third-world farmers.
The scariest mines I've seen are Italian - entirely plastic casing, anti-tilt/lift switches, and sold to almost anyone.
The biggest problem is that mines are laid by people who don't care. When we use mines we mark the area with signs and map it carefully (as required by common sense and international law). Some modern mines even have time-based deactivation systems. However, when some countries lay mines, they just chuck them down randomly and forget about them - thus the ongoing threat from Soviet mines in Afghanistan, or mines in Cambodia.
Even US Presidents aren't dumb enough to sign the convention.
Land mines are a useful defencive weapon system that enables you to hold ground with much less manpower and equipment than you would otherwise have to use.
The vast quantity of land mines manufactured and deployed around Sarajevo by the defenders, is a key reason why Srebrenica is the main massacre (circa 8,000) from the civil war, rather than a Sarajevo massacre involving tens of thousands.
Even if all countries sign, and abibe by the convention, land mines are cheap and easy to manufacture, and the usual suspects will carry on planting mines in farmers fields and village access roads when they want to terrorise the locals in to doing what the local pond scum leader/organisation want.
So if you don't mind having your own troops killed along with any civilians they might be protecting, beause they cant't hold a defensive perimeter (or bug**ing off and leaving the locals to die), then by all means sign up to take land mines out of your armoury.
In the mean time, the rest of us can carry on finding effective ways of detecting and removing the devices once they are no longer needed.
THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS after the Americans left VietNam following their loss of the America War in VietNam, people and animals are STILL being killed and wounded by munitions dropped by the Americans.
Remember, Laos was not active in that war. The US just dropped their bombs all over the Plain of Jars. Even today thousands of hectares remain unsafe.
It is heart wrenching to see pre-school aged children missing parts of their bodies that are happening as a result of explosions TODAY.
American bombing often wasn't targetted, either.
Their bombers used to fly in from the Philippines, drop bombs on Hai Phong -- a major generating areas - then overfly Ha Noi dropping a few more mementos on the way.
They then flew towards Thailand crossing over Son La Province and Laos. If the American bombers had any bombs left, they would dump them over Son La Province in VietNam and Laos.
For readers who haven't had the privilege of visiting VietNam, Son La Province is farming country with magnificent mountains. All those hundreds of small 'ponds' you see are actually bomb craters. There are also many unexploded bombs.
The worst bomb these days is the cluster bomb whch scatter small bomblets, some as small as a large golf-ball, that sit there waiting for a foot, or a child, to disturb them. Many are plastic-encased and have extended lives measured in decades.
That's why I say bring the rats over.
"This is something that could drop out of the sky and give you everything you need to train rodents to sniff out land mines, even if the people who are using it can't read or write"
Question: If you just drop a box of rats into someplace where people can't read or write, how are they going to know what to do with it? All they will know is someone just sent them a container of snacks and a laptop.
I don't think it is Pavlovian conditioning. It's Skinnerian, or operant conditioning. Pavlovian conditioning alone would only make rats expect food when they were dumped next to mines. The conditioning that encourages them to find the mines seems to be training.
Pavlovian, or classic conditioning starts with an unconditioned stimulus-response pair, such as salivating when exposed to a meaty taste. An unrelated stimulus, such as a bell, is introduced alongside the true stimulus. When conditioning is complete the bell elicits the salivation without the meaty taste. The order of events remains stimulus-then-response.
Skinner's conditioning associates a reward or punishment (known as positive or negative reinforcement) with a pattern of behaviour. As training proceeds, the reinforced pattern becomes more likely to occur, and, in due course, so do behaviours that tend to lead to it.
caveat this is 40-year-old knowledge, acquired at a time when my guiding principle was to do as little work as possible, so it may not be entirely reliable.
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Well, the "high tech" GPS thingy put on the rats may be. But rats have been trained at mine sniffing for quite some time. They are led on leashes to find the mines, then the mines are removed. It's quite efficient to clear mine fields and not to just find a safe path through the field, which will only be useful if you have GPS and the tracking information. To find (or create) a safe path you could just send untrained pigs, dogs or whatever pulling a drum behind...
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