Trained Rats Map Minefields With GPS 103
An anonymous reader writes "Believe it or not, but the Department of Defense is paying psychologists to train rats to find mines and circle around them. By attaching little GPS backpacks and supplying a laptop with software that looks for the 'circling around' signature, the DOD hopes its project will allow the release of platoons of rats near suspected minefields so that the laptop software creates a detailed map of where all the mines are located automatically. Not sure if they plan on picking up the rats afterward, but they do assure us that the rats are too lightweight to set off the mines!"
Boom (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmm, today must be get-under-my-skin day for trolls. Ah well.
Poverty is a slippery thing - if you can barely afford to feed yourself with a minimum wage job it's not because you're poor, in fact you're far wealthier than most people in the world; it's because you prioritize other things above eating. Working 40hours/week at $7/hour you're making $1120k/month, even if you assume you lose half that in taxes and deductions that's still $560 per month. In most places in the US you can find at *least* a tiny s
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If you live 10 miles from work and get 20mpg, that's $3-4 dollars each day - or $60-$80 a month, which puts you squarely in the overbudget category. Also, forget about luxuries like car insurance, health insurance, or paying back outstanding debts. Heaven forbid Susie gets sick and you have to choose between getting her to a doctor and food for your other kids.
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That's what legs, bicycles, and bus-passes are for. Or a scooter if you want more speed, range, and versatility, it's a rare scooter that gets under 70mpg. Or find work closer to home (admittedly difficult in some cities).
And if you're not getting health insurance you should be taking home a heck of a lot more than half your salary.
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i think i should point out that public transportation is great at getting people fired. and not everyone has strong legs, or a bicycle, or can feasibly walk/r
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So don't own a car, that's the point. Between purchase, maintenance, insurance, and fuel, cars are pretty substantial money sinks - not as bad as boats or planes, but still far from cheap, a scooter costs a fraction as much on all fronts, provided you go for minimum liability insurance - you can't do *nearly* as much damage as with a car.
No, it's not as convenient/comfortable/safe as a car, but plenty of people who could easily afford a car choose to go that route anyway for lifestyle reasons, it's dising
Re:Boom (Score:5, Insightful)
"In most places in the US you can find at *least* a tiny studio apartment in a non-shithole neighborhood for under $300", et cetera.
I don't know where you live or what your latest explorations into rentals have shown you. I live in a small (50-55k) city in the Midwest and pay $473 for ~ 145 sq. ft. apartment partitioned from a house built in the 1880s in a decidedly non-genteel block near "downtown" where I have walking access to food. In local terms, I've got a good deal - an "affordable" price (about 2/3 of my Social Security), decent landlord, heat and electric included, nearby "amenities."
Please show me your menu for one for a month on $100. Nothing wrong with beans and rice, and the local mercado has good prices on chicken and veggies. My food stamps allow about $6.50/day, so it's doable, but I'd still like to see your menu based on half that.
Where will I put paying roommates, presuming such can be found? Fuck, my usable living area is comparable to a jail cell. I hope that I can save enough in a year buy the stuff to loft the bed so's to have room for the computer table and a chair and a lamp. How long at what savings per month to move to a cheaper location? Chances are I'll be long dead ere then.
Many things can theoretically be done. If you've got superior info and know-how, I'd be happy to be the recipient. My willingness and ability, medical matters aside, to deal with what level of stinting to get to greener grass whilst still alive, and, one hopes, the ability to enjoy such, is open for consideration. YMMV.
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On the menu - I've never really had one: go to the store, buy whatever's cheap, and do something creative with it. A good cookbook helps for inspiration - I'd recommend Joy of Cooking, the older the better. It's a rare off-the-wall ingredient that it doesn't have at least a handful of different recipes for, and more common stuff typically includes a "strategic overview" discussion of the common cooking techniques and the pros and cons thereof.
General thoughts: For non-perishable stuff wait until it's on
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Ok, thanks, that's some good stuff. That's generally the way I shop, btw.
I no longer have any of them, but the five best food books I've run across are Joy of Cooking, early 30s; Diet for a Small Planet; the Culinary Institute of America 'bible'; The Art of One-Armed Cookery (not The One-Armed Cook, I'm thinking of the one written by a woman in Boston who ran a rooming house and decided there was little worth cooking that couldn't be done with a bottle of beer in hand); and On Food and Cooking by Harold Mc
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Hmm, I like the sound of that one-armed cookery book, I'll have to look for that. And a 30's Joy of Cooking? What a treat.
Used properly a freezer can be a valuable money-saver, for instance buying a couple party-size meat packs when on clearance and freezing them in more realistic portions - keep an eye out for small freezer-only appliances, they're not that common but can get you the capacity in a more easily transportable form factor that can be tucked out of the way someplace. Top-loading (chest style
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Great tips! I am planning on moving out soon.
Why the 3-2 day rule? I figure that it is best to shop every 3 days for 3 days of food.
Also, do you find it to be less work if you shop for certain kinds of foods on certain days, as opposed to a bit of everything on each shopping trip? I ask that, assuming that the prices are the same either way, even though in reality it isn't.
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No rule - just a thought for someone who can't bring home a lot of food at once. Obviously over the long haul you don't want to keep buying food faster than you eat it. Personally I try to keep my pantry stocked with around a month or two of food, and rarely let it fall below a couple weeks, without worrying about the details on any given trip.
As you say - prices aren't the same every time, if you shop like they are you'll end up spending a lot more over the long term. If ease of shopping is more importa
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Great stuff. It seems so obvious in hindsight. Hopefully, I won't forget what it's like to not know this and become be judgmental of others.
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"Best of luck."
Lost track, sorry. Thanks. I consider it a work in progress - or piecework, one.
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Hmm, today must be get-under-my-skin day for trolls. Ah well.
Poverty is a slippery thing - if you can barely afford to feed yourself with a minimum wage job it's not because you're poor, in fact you're far wealthier than most people in the world; it's because you prioritize other things above eating.
Internet quote of the year award.
If you can barely afford to feed yourself... it's because you prioritize other things above eating... like dignity, self-respect, life experiences, anything resembling enjoyment, etc, etc.
Now get back to work peon.
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If your dignity, self-respect, and enjoyment of life depend on material things then it's not a lack of money that's your problem.
Consider this - the happiest cultures in the world tend to be those that are also quite poor. We could argue about causes, but I would suggest that once you have food in your belly and a roof over your head all else becomes a matter of perspective - in the absence of material wealth they are forced to seek their joy in friendship, revelry, and good works, which psychologists have
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That leaves $60+/month for things like phone, gas, electricity, clothing, transportation, etc. It's not easy, but it can be done.
If your dignity, self-respect, and enjoyment of life depend on material things then it's not a lack of money that's your problem.
I had to check the parent post because it was almost unbelievable it was the same person. In the parent post you talk about $60/month as left over income; not for entertainment or other indulgences, but for necessities like gas, electricity, clothing, etc.
Then you turn around and spout about materialism as though these theoretical yachts and European vacations won't bring happiness. You are not even on the same page. Materialism isn't deciding between gas or food; or fast food and fresh vegetables, yet t
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There are many true answers to most questions, the one I choose to offer depends on who is doing the asking.
Gas versus food and *especially* fast food versus much cheaper food with actual food-value is most definitely a matter of materialism (and don't tell me it's not much cheaper, I regularly eat all manner of filling, delicious, nutritious meals for less than $1.50 per meal). Survival requires water, food, and, in most places, some slight shelter from the elements; *everything* beyond that is a luxury,
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Human beings are living organisms and so have strong survival instincts. Biological imperatives (e.g. reproduce) typically trump social conventions (e.g. property rights). That's not a value judgment on my part; it's a fact. So, if you're waiting for the poor to peaceably fade into oblivion out of respect for the sanct
As a New Yorker... (Score:3, Funny)
I'd love to see those fat little fuckers get blown up to pieces.
Maybe the DoD can come take some from the subway?
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Or they could just mine the subway.
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And kill two birds with one stone! Or something...
Mines aren't the worry (Score:2)
Hawks, coyotes, and other predators are, but I guess the theory is that rats are so cheap they don't care if they lose some.
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actually the GPS on the rat might be more expensive than the rat itself :)
Re:Mines aren't the worry (Score:4, Funny)
that's the other part of the program: 'organic mine removal drones'.
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If the rats are organic mine detectors, then the hawks are more like "organic organic mine detector removal drones".
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not when they go 'boom'.
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Well, not every rat can detect mines so you've got to factor in training. Hard to believe the time invested training the rat doesn't exceed a ~$50 GPS beacon.
Re:Mines aren't the worry (Score:4, Funny)
Rats can be trained very easily. They're bright enough to learn fast and yet dumb enough to walk into a minefield for us.
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which isn't all that dumb if they won't set off the mines, and get food when they're done.
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Depends on how expensive the training is.
Great Idea! But.... (Score:1)
So now all mines will be made with rat bait.....
Unclear on the concept (Score:2)
They have trained the rats to cluster around a mine.
Your idea to "defeat" this is to make it more likely rats will find the mine to cluster around.
Genius?
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Don't need the DoD, already being done (Score:5, Informative)
It's not crazy, and it's already being done, by organization like HeroRATs - http://www.apopo.org/cms.php?cmsid=107 [apopo.org]. They train African giant pouched rats to detect mines. They're also using them to detect tuberculosis, in human spit. Yuck, but way cool.
Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
Ancient Joke Alert (Score:5, Funny)
What goes peck-peck-bang?
A chicken in a minefield!
Sorry, it just seemed appropriate...
odor signatures (Score:4, Funny)
TFA says they train the rat to recognize the odor of the explosives in the soil. Wouldn't it be easy to enclose the explosive in a hermetically sealed wrapper to keep any such odor in the mine?
Also, wouldn't it be better to train lawyers for this? We have more of them than rats, and they're not as cute and the soldiers will become less attached to them, in case they do set off some of the mines.
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TFA says they train the rat to recognize the odor of the explosives in the soil. Wouldn't it be easy to enclose the explosive in a hermetically sealed wrapper to keep any such odor in the mine?
Pot-sniffing dogs regularly detect pot that's been sealed in one bag, that sealed in a second bag, and that in a waterproof plastic container. Small volatile compounds penetrate through solid material, and explosives are chock-full of small volatile compounds. Plus, the factories where these are made have those same compounds all over everything, so all the materials used in construction have trace compounds all over the insides and outsides.
Cheap countermeasure (Score:3)
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The fake baits might work if the rat can't be trained to ignore them, but false positives are not the issue when clearing mines. Neither is relative attrition - in combat, mine clearance already is very costly (including in casualties) and only done when the tactical advantage is worth it; in humanitarian mine clearing, the relative attrition is beside the point anyway, as there is no enemy.
(Also, the reason landmines are not designed to be triggered by small animals is that most places are full of small an
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Wouldn't the obvious thing for a mine layer to do be to use the explosive itself as fake bait? Presumablly these rats are sniffing out traces that leak out of the mines so blanketing the whole area with a low concentration of the stuff should prevent the enemy finding where the actual mines are.
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How would that work? Rat sees food, rat eats food, rat continues on. If food is rare it's not an issue, if food is common very quickly rat is full and gets back to work. It's not like it's going to circle the food or take a nap on it, it'll just be a detour on an already random path. Poison might work, but it's not that hard to train a dog not to eat found food, I doubt a rat would be any more difficult (during training all found food has been pre-treated to be very unpleasant when eaten).
As for blowing
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A few bags of Reese's Pieces spread around the field could be an effective way to confuse the rats. I haven't heard of rats being trained to ignore food when they are working like dogs. Another option would be if the mine could be triggered by a rat digging coat it with food smells. You loose a mine but you take out an expensive trained rat.
You could still use this technique in non wartime situations to find mines left from previous engagements. It's brilliant, regardless if it's new or old hat now, and if it saves a few children's legs I'm all for it.
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Why train the rats? (Score:2)
Just get cheaper GPS units and make a note of when it stops sending data.
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Improved headline: Untrained rats map minefields with explosions.
LOL :)
Those poor rats (Score:3)
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Announcer for "Rat Chicks", a reality show.
"Pamela Anderson is bending over to take a look. Even after being with Tommy Lee, she has a great looking... BOOM!"
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Re:Those poor rats (Score:4, Informative)
(this is the troll post that guarantees me a ticket to hell, isn't it?)
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Re:Those poor rats (Score:5, Funny)
Initially, they tried using conservatives, but it was just too hard to get one near a conflict zone.
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That would be because conservatives have a proven track record of turning lots of places into war zones. Purely coincidence.
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It's also impossible to see your sense of humor.
Because you don't have one.
I mean, seriously. What the hell were you thinking when you wrote that post?
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Really? I know several that were or currently are in a war zone.
Fair enough. So then, you'd agree that it's just the loud-mouthed chicken-hawk type conservatives that seem to find their way in to politics rather than serving honorably. Yes?
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Really? I know several that were or currently are in a war zone.
Fair enough. So then, you'd agree that it's just the loud-mouthed chicken-hawk type conservatives that seem to find their way in to politics rather than serving honorably. Yes?
No. I don't consider a lot of those in politics to be conservative at all.
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Agreed. Most politicians that label themselves conservatives are good salesmen who pander to the religious majority and old people. Most politicians that label themselves liberals are good salesmen who pander to minorities and the young. When it is all said and done, they are all salesmen who are trying to sell the same thing (a giant pile of horseshit) to different people.
GPS? (Score:3)
For GPS to be useful for detecting mines in this way you'd need to have accuracy of the order of half a meter. I can barely get accuracy of less than ten meters with ordinary GPS. I suppose this is possible to do with differential GPS but I have to ask how long does it take to lock, and how well does it work in minefields that have obstructions from direct line of sight. Just having a building or a tree in the way causes accuracy to drop off significantly, and may cause loss of GPS signal altogether. I would have thought that they'd use some other means of position measurment that is not subject to such limitations.
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This kind of gps uses a base station and is accurate to cm, not meters.
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You don't even need differential GPS. You don't need the exact coordinates of the mine, you just need to get to its real location. Take the GPS location from the rat, then move until your own GPS location (almost) matches that location.
GPS error isn't like that; the error in the location of the receiver isn't a constant off-by-this-many-meters-in-this-direction error, but rather an amount of uncertainty. If the rat's GPS receiver is accurate to 10 meters, that means that the coordinates shown by the receiver are at the center of a circle with a radius of 10 meters. The actual position is somewhere within the area inclosed by that circle.
Taking a second GPS receiver with the same accuracy means that now you have two circles that you can
Wouldn't it be easier... (Score:2)
KISS? (Score:3)
I've always wondered if there was a *simple* method to deactivate minefields cheaply (Keep It Simple and Straightfoward). I've wondered whether a cloth sack filled with 150 pounds of dirt (weight discriminating trigger), and dragged across a minefield with a long length of rope. If a mine goes off you lost one sack and need to shovel more dirt. Repeat as necessary.
I realize that this will probably not work since military contractors have spent a lot of time ensuring that the mines are 'smart'. However I think that there has to be a simple solution. Getting legions of highly trained rats to run through a minefield (and not set off the mines) does not fit the criteria of simple nor effective.
The solution of getting a mine deactivation specialist (or whatever the technical term the military gives it) to inch thru the minefield with a wire probe moving the soil at a careful handful at time isn't the solution either. There is simply too many mines, too few removal specialist, and it takes too long.
Fortunately for me I live in a country that for now does not have minefields (for now). I believe that minefields are evil. They persist for years, sometimes even decades, often target non-combatants, and are indiscriminate. There has to be a simpler solution than minefield rats. This sounds too much like bad movie science/comedy, like laser-armed sharks, or penguins armed with rocket launchers.
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don't know what it costs, But this is a British tool its called a python basically something similar to a firemans hose packed with explosive. fired out across the mine field by a rocket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eeaou2L2sI&feature=related [youtube.com]
It isn't designed to clear a mine field, just quickly clear a path through a minefield, according to another video it was first used in Afghanistan fun video if you like explosions
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First, the rats do not set off mines, or your minefield would self-clear too quickly from common field mice, squirrels, etc.
As far as clearing a minefield without rats, there was something in WWII called a Flail Tank, that had a long boom with a rotating cylinder at the end. On the cylinder were lengths of chain that beat the ground to trigger the mines. The exploding mine usually didn't harm the chains or the cylinder, so it wasn't difficult to clear an entire minefield once its edges were roughly known.
Yes Virginia, Mines are evil. (Score:3)
the acceptable civilian risk/kill ratio of mines makes them evil.
no other class of weapon is as inexpensive, and deadly decades later.
yes, occasionally unexploded artillery shells turn up on beaches....
but for the most part-- minefields left behind are just flat out wrong....
read up on it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmine#Anti-personnel_mine_ban [wikipedia.org]
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So the Khmer Rouge were not evil, just their mines? Seriously?
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Iran and Iraq just used POWs and 'undesirables', sometimes kids. Very efficient, although possibly not entirely in accordance to the Geneva convention...
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Possibly?
Awesome (Score:1)
Is this the best way to go? (Score:1)
You know, there are a lot of lawyers who are having trouble finding jobs... you could be hiring them to do this, and then you don't have to worry about the rats' handlers feeling bad about the rats potentially getting hurt if one of them somehow trips a mine...
Nothing can go wrong with a few rats... (Score:1)
...just ask the Cook Islands...
Wanted (Score:2)
Anyone else think of the movie 'Wanted' when they read this?
What would PETA think? (Score:1)
Since PETA would likley have a serious problem with this I suggest that instead of rats we use members of PETA!
Give 'em hell Johnathon Brisby! (Score:2)
See! See! I told my parents that the Secret of NIMH [imdb.com] wasn't just a fictional piece! Trained smart rats with backpacks CAN help us humans... even after we took their rosebush fort!
if they're too light to trigger mines (Score:2)
Why not teach them to carry people across minefields? :)