Imagine a child peacefully playing in her yard or a farmer plowing his field. Imagine an explosion. Such a gritty scene is not likely to happen in the United States, but it happens in some formerly war-torn countries where land mines pose a serious threat to life and limb.Every 22 minutes someone is killed by a mine, totaling 26,000 deaths annually, according to the International Organization of Students Against Land mines Web site.”There are 80 to 100 million land mines in place around the world, and there are around another 2 million ready to be deployed,” said Keith Shubert, a senior researcher at Battelle Memorial Institute. “Land mines are a serious problem.”Ohio State engineers are teaming up with researchers from Battelle to develop a portable device capable of detecting land mines using radar.”OSU graduate students and members of our lab have developed the radar and done research towards the development of the detector,” said Jon Young, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.OSU has developed the components of the device that use radar to find land mines, while Battelle has been working on putting the radar into a usable system, Young said.Land mines can be hard to detect because they are no longer made exclusively of metal.”Land mines are … small and plastic. It takes a long time to clear a field because of false alarms,” Young said.OSU has been involved in developing the device since 1994, said Chi Chih Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at OSU.”We have made a lot of progress, but we have a long way to go,” Chen said.This year major advances have been made in the antenna used on the device.”The new antenna is a lot smaller than the previous one. It also brings us one step closer to a totally portable unit,” Chen said.The goal is to eventually have a device that can be carried by people in the field, he said. As with any project that is developed in a laboratory, the key is testing in the field.”Next week we’re doing some testing in Maryland. Once we are done with that we will know where we stand with the device,” he said.If testing is successful the device will be used by the military to clear areas and make them safe for civilians around the world, Chen said.”Any kind of device that is going to help us save lives when it comes to land mines is a welcomed advancement,” said U.S. Army Maj. Aubin Jack.The prospect of saving lives is what drives Chen to continue developing the portable detection device.”Our responsibility is to clean up existing land mines, and protect the innocent civilians who are at risk of being injured or killed because of land mines,” Chen said.