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How I taught rats to sniff out land mines

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    I'm here today to share with you
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    an extraordinary journey -
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    extraordinarily rewarding journey,
    actually -
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    which brought me into
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    training rats
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    to save human lives
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    by detecting landmines
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    and tuberculosis.
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    As a child, I had two passions.
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    One was a passion for rodents.
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    I had all kinds of rats,
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    mice, hamsters,
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    gerbils, squirrels.
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    You name it, I bred it, and I sold them to pet shops.
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    (Laughter)
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    I also had a passion for Africa.
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    Growing up in a multicultural environment,
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    we had African students in the house,
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    and I learned about their stories,
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    so different backgrounds,
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    dependency on imported know-how,
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    goods, services,
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    exuberant cultural diversity.
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    Africa was truly fascinating for me.
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    I became an industrial engineer,
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    engineer in product development,
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    and I focused on appropriate detection technologies,
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    actually the first appropriate technologies
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    for developing countries.
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    I started working in the industry,
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    but I wasn't really happy to contribute
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    to a material consumer society
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    in a linear, extracting
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    and manufacturing mode.
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    I quit my job to focus on the real world problem:
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    landmines.
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    We're talking '95 now.
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    Princess Diana is announcing on TV
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    that landmines form a structural barrier
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    to any development, which is really true.
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    As long as these devices are there,
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    or there is suspicion of landmines,
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    you can't really enter into the land.
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    Actually, there was an appeal worldwide
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    for new detectors
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    sustainable in the environments
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    where they're needed to produce,
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    which is mainly in the developing world.
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    We chose rats.
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    Why would you choose rats?
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    Because, aren't they vermin?
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    Well, actually rats are,
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    in contrary to what most people think about them,
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    rats are highly sociable creatures.
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    And actually, our product -- what you see here.
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    There's a target somewhere here.
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    You see an operator, a trained African
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    with his rats in front
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    who actually are left and right.
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    There, the animal finds a mine.
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    It scratches on the soil.
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    And the animal comes back for a food reward.
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    Very, very simple.
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    Very sustainable in this environment.
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    Here, the animal gets its food reward.
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    And that's how it works.
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    Very, very simple.
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    Now why would you use rats?
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    Rats have been used since the '50s last century,
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    in all kinds of experiments.
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    Rats have more genetic material
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    allocated to olfaction
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    than any other mammal species.
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    They're extremely sensitive to smell.
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    Moreover, they have the mechanisms to map all these smells
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    and to communicate about it.
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    Now how do we communicate with rats?
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    Well don't talk rat,
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    but we have a clicker,
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    a standard method for animal training,
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    which you see there.
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    A clicker, which makes a particular sound
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    with which you can reinforce particular behaviors.
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    First of all, we associate the click sound with a food reward,
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    which is smashed banana and peanuts together in a syringe.
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    Once the animal knows click, food,
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    click, food, click, food --
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    so click is food --
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    we bring it in a cage with a hole,
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    and actually the animal learns
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    to stick the nose in the hole
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    under which a target scent is placed,
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    and to do that for five seconds --
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    five seconds, which is long for a rat.
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    Once the animal knows this, we make the task a bit more difficult.
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    It learns how to find the target smell
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    in a cage with several holes, up to 10 holes.
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    Then the animal learns
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    to walk on a leash in the open
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    and find targets.
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    In the next step, animals learn
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    to find real mines in real minefields.
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    They are tested and accredited
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    according to International Mine Action Standards,
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    just like dogs have to pass a test.
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    This consists of 400 square meters.
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    There's a number of mines
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    placed blindly,
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    and the team of trainer and their rat
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    have to find all the targets.
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    If the animal does that, it gets a license
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    as an accredited animal
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    to be operational in the field --
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    just like dogs, by the way.
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    Maybe one slight difference:
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    we can train rats at a fifth of the price
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    of training the mining dog.
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    This is our team in Mozambique:
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    one Tanzanian trainer,
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    who transfers the skills
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    to these three Mozambican fellows.
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    And you should see the pride in the eyes of these people.
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    They have a skill,
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    which makes them much less dependent
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    on foreign aid.
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    Moreover, this small team
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    together with, of course, you need the heavy vehicles
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    and the manual de-miners to follow-up.
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    But with this small investment in a rat capacity,
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    we have demonstrated in Mozambique
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    that we can reduce the cost-price per square meter
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    up to 60 percent
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    of what is currently normal --
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    two dollars per square meter, we do it at $1.18,
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    and we can still bring that price down.
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    Question of scale.
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    If you can bring in more rats,
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    we can actually make the output even bigger.
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    We have a demonstration site in Mozambique.
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    Eleven African governments
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    have seen that they can become less dependent
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    by using this technology.
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    They have signed the pact for peace
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    and treaty in the Great Lakes region,
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    and they endorse hero rats
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    to clear their common borders of landmines.
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    But let me bring you to a very different problem.
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    And there's about 6,000 people last year
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    that walked on a landmine,
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    but worldwide last year,
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    almost 1.9 million died from tuberculosis
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    as a first cause of infection.
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    Especially in Africa
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    where T.B. and HIV are strongly linked,
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    there is a huge common problem.
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    Microscopy, the standard WHO procedure,
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    reaches from 40 to 60 percent reliability.
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    In Tanzania -- the numbers don't lie --
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    45 percent of people -- T.B. patients --
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    get diagnosed with T.B. before they die.
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    It means that, if you have T.B.,
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    you have more chance that you won't be detected,
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    but will just die from T.B. secondary infections and so on.
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    And if, however,
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    you are detected very early, diagnosed early,
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    treatment can start,
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    and even in HIV-positives, it makes sense.
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    You can actually cure T.B.,
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    even in HIV-positives.
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    So in our common language, Dutch,
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    the name for T.B.
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    is "tering,"
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    which, etymologically,
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    refers to the smell of tar.
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    Already the old Chinese
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    and the Greek, Hippocrates,
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    have actually published,
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    documented, that T.B. can be diagnosed
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    based on the volatiles
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    exuding from patients.
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    So what we did is we collected some samples --
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    just as a way of testing --
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    from hospitals,
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    trained rats on them
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    and see if this works,
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    and wonder, well,
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    we can reach 89 percent sensitivity,
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    86 percent specificity
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    using multiple rats in a row.
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    This is how it works,
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    and really, this is a generic technology.
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    We're talking now explosives, tuberculosis,
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    but can you imagine,
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    you can actually put anything under there.
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    So how does it work?
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    You have a cassette with 10 samples.
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    You put these 10 samples at once in the cage.
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    An animal only needs two hundredths of a second
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    to discriminate the scent, so it goes extremely fast.
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    Here it's already at the third sample.
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    This is a positive sample.
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    It gets a click sound and comes for the food reward.
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    And by doing so, very fast,
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    we can have like a second-line opinion
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    to see which patients are positive,
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    which are negative.
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    Just as an indication,
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    whereas a microscopist can process
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    40 samples in a day,
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    a rat can process
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    the same amount of samples
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    in seven minutes only.
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    A cage like this --
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    (Applause)
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    A cage like this -- provided that you have rats,
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    and we have now currently
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    25 tuberculosis rats --
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    a cage like this, operating throughout the day,
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    can process 1,680 samples.
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    Can you imagine the potential offspring applications --
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    environmental detection
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    of pollutants in soils,
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    customs applications,
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    detection of illicit goods in containers and so on.
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    But let's stick first to tuberculosis.
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    I just want to briefly highlight,
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    the blue rods
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    are the scores of microscopy only
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    at the five clinics in Dar es Salaam
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    on a population of 500,000 people,
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    where 15,000 reported to get a test done.
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    Microscopy for 1,800 patients.
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    And by just presenting the samples once more to the rats
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    and looping those results back,
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    we were able to increase case detection rates
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    by over 30 percent.
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    Throughout last year,
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    we've been -- depending on which intervals you take --
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    we've been consistently
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    increasing case detection rates
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    in five hospitals in Dar es Salaam
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    between 30 and 40 percent.
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    So this is really considerable.
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    Knowing that a missed patient by microscopy
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    infects up to 15 people,
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    healthy people, per year,
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    you can be sure
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    that we have saved lots of lives.
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    At least our hero rats have saved lots of lives.
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    The way forward for us
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    is now to standardize this technology.
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    And there are simple things
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    like, for instance, we have a small laser in the sniffer hole
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    where the animal has to stick for five seconds.
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    So, to standardize this.
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    Also, to standardize the pellets,
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    the food rewards,
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    and to semi-automate this
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    in order to replicate this on a much larger scale
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    and affect the lives of many more people.
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    To conclude, there are also other applications at the horizon.
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    Here is a first prototype
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    of our camera rat,
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    which is a rat with a rat backpack
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    with a camera that can go under rubble
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    to detect for victims
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    after earthquake and so on.
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    This is in a prototype stage.
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    We don't have a working system here yet.
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    To conclude, I would actually like to say,
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    you may think this is about rats, these projects,
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    but in the end it is about people.
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    It is about empowering vulnerable communities
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    to tackle difficult, expensive
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    and dangerous humanitarian detection tasks,
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    and doing that with a local resource,
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    plenty available.
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    So something completely different
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    is to keep on challenging your perception
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    about the resources surrounding you,
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    whether they are environmental,
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    technological, animal, or human.
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    And to respectfully harmonize with them
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    in order to foster a sustainable world.
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    Thank you very much.
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    (Applause)
Title:
How I taught rats to sniff out land mines
Speaker:
Bart Weetjens
Description:

At TEDxRotterdam, Bart Weetjens talks about his extraordinary project: training rats to sniff out land mines. He shows clips of his "hero rats" in action, and previews his work's next phase: teaching them to turn up tuberculosis in the lab.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
11:50

English subtitles

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