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Mice That Can Discover Landmines
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A land mine is an explosive device specifically created to be activated by applying certain pressure to its surface. The exact number of buried and unexploded landmines is unknown. However, it is estimated that millions of landmines and other unexploded ordnance are buried in more than 76 countries and territories in all regions of the world.

Landmines can keep its activity for more than 50 years after being buried into the ground. For this reason, all countries with large estimated number of land mines are making a great effort to discover them and to get rid of them. To do this, millions of landmines that are still buried in various of countries around the world must be located first. Finding these landmines is extremely difficult, as most minefields are unmarked. After marking the mines, there is still left to de-mine this areas, which is also difficult, dangerous and expensive.

Current Detection Technologies

Various detection technologies are currently used, each with limits or flaws. Dogs and other "sniffers" have high ongoing expenses, are subject to fatigue, and can be fooled by masked scents. Metal detectors are sensitive to metal mines and firing pins but cannot reliably find plastic mines. Infrared detectors effectively detect recently placed mines, but they are expensive and limited to certain temperature conditions. Thermal neutron activation detectors are accurate but are large for field use, slow, and expensive.

In early attempts, ground-penetrating radar was sensitive to large mines, had good coverage rate at a distance and with signal processing, could discriminate antitank mines from clutter such as rocks beneath the ground surface. This type of radar, however, remains expensive, cannot detect antipersonnel mines because its resolution is too low, and frequently records false alarms from clutter sources.

Therefore, there is a need to find new ways to find buried land mines, which would be faster, safer and more accurate than today’s.

The Implementation of Genetic Engineering

Researchers have created a mouse that is 500 times more sensitive to TNT then its normal relatives. This could be cheap and fast way of finding hidden explosives.

Scientists are creating super- mouse to search for landmines, thanks to its super-powerful sense of smell.

Researchers at Hunter College of the City University of New York, genetically modified these animals to be 500 times better equipped to sniff for mines then normal members of its kind. They hope that the "hero mice" will be able to warn people of the buried bombs.

Hidden landmines are deadly reality in nearly 70 countries worldwide, and their detection and removal is expensive and dangerous. At the present time, for their detection, the metal detectors, radars, magnetometers and sniffer dogs are used.

Belgian organization APOPO is already using African giant rats as a cheaper way of searching for landmines. Rats are not genetically modified, but their sense of smell is sharp enough to detect buried TNT. Seeking rats are trained to scratch the ground when they feel the hidden mine (fortunately, they are small enough not to trigger the explosives).
Although sniffers for mines are efficient (with two human guides they can search in one hour the area that would take two days for people with metal detectors), they still need nine months of training before they are reliable and the process costs about 6,000 euro per one rat.

On the other hand, genetically modified mice are due to incorporated molecules more sensitive to TNT, so they are expected to change its behavior involuntarily, which in turn means that they will not require long training.

Charlotte D’ Hulst, a molecular neurobiologist from Hunter College, who presented their work at the meeting of the Society of Neuroscientists, has used genetic modification to ensure that the mice have between 10,000 and one million neurons sensitive to the smell with receptors that detect TNT, compared to only 4,000 in the normal animal, which would "probably increase the sensitivity limits of this sense about 500 times," she said.

Each neuron of the smell sensor in the nose of the mouse is covered with a kind of smell receptors. Usually, one specific receptor comes on every thousand neurons sensitive to smell, but about half of the neurons sensitive to the smell of the D'Hust’s mice have a receptor for the detection of TNT.

The specific smell receptor was originally discovered by Danny Dhanasekaran, molecular biologist at the Medical College of the University of Oklahoma. Dhanasekaran says that the given smell is usually detected by a group of useful smell receptors, which help the natural noses more easily and accurately distinguish smells. However, artificial creation of an abundance of artificial receptors that can detect TNT, D'Hulst and her colleagues may increase the sensitivity of the system, so that “it would become easy to use them in the operations of mine discovery," says Dhanasekeran, who continued to search for other types of TNT receptors.

D'Hulst hopes that this huge commitment to one smell will provide a simple way to know whether or not modified mice encountered TNT. Recent research suggests that the sudden and intense stimulation of the olfactory system in mice induce a seizure. "We can only hope that our mice will get a seizure when they detect landmine. We do not have to work with the food reward and we will probably use a system of radio signals. The chip implant can monitor report and record their behavior. "

The Barriers for Implementation

Researchers have not yet tested the behavior of mice in the study. Roger Hess, director of field operations in the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, a charitable organization that develops technology to help remove landmines, considers this method of sniffing for mines to be an improvement, but it will still depend on the detection of released steam from the mine. “The release of smell from the soil may depend on soil conditions and weather conditions, a trace of explosives may be located a few feet away from the place where the mine is actually buried”, he said. The technique also will not work for mines which do not have an opening through which the smell of explosives can go out.
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