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- Every 15 minutes, 1 person falls victim to landmines.
1 million people have been killed or injured by anti-personnel mines. 26,000 people a year become victims, meaning 70 people a day or about one person every fifteen minutes. 300,000 children and counting are severely disabled because of landmines. Half the people who stand on an anti-personnel mine die from their injuries before they are found or taken to hospital.
- Every 15 minutes, 1 person falls victim to landmines.
- The United States has NOT signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.
“Until the 1990s, antipersonnel landmines had been used by most armed forces of the world, in one form or another, causing tens of thousands of casualties a year and creating many hardships for affected communities that could no longer safely access land, buildings, and natural resources.” Also known as the Ottawa Convention, this international agreement bans the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of antipersonnel mines. Landmine use has dropped dramatically thanks to the treaty…so why has the United States not signed?
- A method used in Afghan has been used to detonate land mines.
Massoud Hassani built an inexpensive, a “tumbleweed-like” apparatus called the Mine Kafon that uses wind gusts to sweep through fields and detonate mines as it goes. “Born from the designs of the wind-powered toys that Hassani and his brother sent tumbling in the desert outside of Kabul as children, the Mine Kafon almost looks like a toy itself — a giant mass of poles and suction cups, made from bamboo and biodegradable plastics.”
- There are currently several methods used to detect landmines, but little research for disarming.
One of these methods involves the use of “hero rats” who are
trained to sniff out landmines (and tuberculosis). An organization called APOPO trains these rats, and uses them in seven countries.Thanks to these hero rats, Mozambique is now clear of all known land mines. You can even adopt these rats, who are actually very cute animals!
- Drones can deliver pizza — what a time to be alive!
Dominos pizza successfully delivered a pizza in a suburban neighborhood using a drone. This drone is called the “Domicopter” and is a quadcopter, just like the one we are using. This exemplifies the amazingly wide range of applications for drones. In the future, these drones may fill the skies with cheese and pepperoni, and take pizza where it has never gone before.
By Premal Patel, Urvi Patel, Everett Pitts, Alexa Senio, and Jeffrey Small