We used giant African pouched rats (Cricetomys gambianus) as land mine-detection animals in Mozambique because they have an excellent sense of smell, weigh too little to activate mines, and are native to sub-Saharan Africa, and therefore are resistant to local parasites and diseases. In 2009 the rats searched 93,400 m(2) of land, finding 41 mines and 54 other explosive devices. Humans with meta...

In this work we have reviewed the contribution of POLINSAR to the detection of buried objects (e.g. mines). The starting point, derived from an analysis performed by the polarization subspace method (PSM), is the fact that the scattering mechanisms which maximize the interferometric coherence correspond to circular polarizations (or nearly circular). This means that this polarization should be ...

Minesweeper is a popular single-person game that was invented in the 1970’s (Figure 1). A fixed number N of mines are randomly placed on a W ×H grid and are hidden from the player. The game begins with an empty field. The player opens (via clicking) one square at a time. If the square contains a mine then the player blows up and the game is over. Otherwise the square becomes uncovered containin...

We consider the problem of localising an unknown number of land mines using concentration information provided by a wireless sensor network. A number of vapour sensors/detectors, deployed in the region of interest, are able to detect the concentration of the explosive vapours, emanating from buried land mines. The collected data is communicated to a fusion centre. Using a model for the transpor...

It has long been recognized that surface-laid land mines and other man-made objects tend to have different polarization characteristics than natural materials. This fact has been used to advantage in a number of mine detecting sensors developed over the last two decades. In this work we present the theoretical basis for this polarization dependence. The theory of scattering from randomly rough ...

The wastewater at Sukinda chromite mines (SCM) area of Orissa (India) showed high levels of toxic hexavalent chromium (Cr VI). Wastewater from chromium-contaminated mines exhibit potential threats for biotic community in the vicinity. The aim of the present investigation is to develop a suitable phytoremediation technology for the effective removal of toxic hexavalent chromium from mines wastew...

This paper focusses on the description of reliable, safe and economical treatment of mine water from different types of mines and applications by advanced membrane systems. The applications include mine drainage water from underground mines, intrusion water in open pit mines and excess water from tailing storage facilities. The illustrated references confirm the existence of robust, reliable, a...

The imaging of buried land mines continues to present significant signal-processing challenges in the development of inverse methods for the detection of plastic mines buried in soil. To address this difficult problem, recent mathematical advances in the development of the Elliptic Systems Method are used to generate images of the buried land mines. The proposed approach adapts earlier methods,...