The SWGDOG is a committee of scientists, government agencies, private industry, and working dog specialists with the aim of establishing best practices for the use of detection teams. (I assume the primary focus is on canine detection teams, but could extend to other species or even non-biological detectors).
SWGDOG recently released a draft of terminology and general guidelines for review until mid-February 2006. I’ve read the terminology fairly careful and am quite pleased!
Here is the definition of drive:
Propensity to exhibit a particular pattern of behaviors to particular stimuli. Drives can be enhanced or diminished through experience (i.e. training, environment, etc.), but they can never be created or eliminated. Expression of the relationship between the inter-environment of the animal which includes genetics and the external environment which includes experience.
Propensity to exhibit a particular pattern of behaviors to particular stimuli. Drives can be enhanced or diminished through experience (i.e. training, environment, etc.), but they can never be created or eliminated.
Expression of the relationship between the inter-environment of the animal which includes genetics and the external environment which includes experience.
This makes the oft-heard expression working in drive quite vague. I understand the intent, but incorporating scientific rigor to dog training seems a very positive direction!
James C Walker, director of the Florida State University Sensory Research Institute, has found that dogs do as well as state-of-the-art screening tests at sniffing out people with lung or breast cancer.
The dogs correctly detected 99% of the lung cancer samples, and made a mistake with only 1% of the healthy controls. With breast cancer, they correctly detected 88% of the positive samples, and made a mistake on only 2% of the controls.
The next steps address the question of whether dogs are really detecting “cancer” or if they might be responding to disease symptoms associated with cancer. If it’s true that dogs can detect chemicals in concentrations as small as a few parts per trillion, can dogs outdo standard screening tests?
Read the article at New Scientist.
On a related note, fingerprint scanners may soon contain a scent detector that distinguishes between human skin and fake fingers made of silicone.
Read this article at New Scientist.
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