Slashdot Mirror
Genetically Modified Flower Detects Landmines
cdneng2 writes "Yahoo has the story that a Danish
company has developed a plant that can detect landmines. The genetically modified weed that has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating from explosives buried in soil." The company website has a bit more information.
When the kids of 3 world countries run out into the fields to pick the flowers??
Who's going to volunteer to plant them? BOOOM!!! Still, this is a pretty neat idea. Might not be so good for people who are color-blind, like my dad. :)
-1, "1337" speak
I wish Diana Spencer were alive to see this development. I bet she would have gotten other celebrities to underwrite the use of this technology to save countless lives worldwide. But luckily there are other wealthy individuals who might undertake an experiment with this plant, and make that company rich in the process (which is, in the words of Stuart Smalley, "okay").
Elton John will write a song about it, too.
Nice to see a company making a bio weapon that helps people instead of making them die horribly and slowly.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Stop to smell the roses, and go BOOM? :)
Actually, this is a pretty smart idea. Maybe they should code it into something really fast growing, like kudzu.
-Ed
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
How far do the roots grow from the plant, exactly?
first post for the jihad!
Anti-Slash
chrysanthemum in there somewhere. You know like the firework explosion?
The real question is who's going to plant the flowers? Seems like the gardener will discover landmines well before the flowers have a chance.....
Shouldn't the gardeners blowing up while planting flowers be enough?
This will do wonders for places like New Zealand, Utah, and Atlanta, where landmines have been laid so much that kids can no longer play outside. I heard Elijah Wood and the guy who played Sam were very seriously injured by a landmine on weathertop.
Someone's going to be pushing up the daisies!
Well, this might be one use of GM where the environmentalists can't complain much with all the children maimed and killed by these things each year...
detect the slashdotting that about to occur :)
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
I can just see a field of flowers all one colour.
Then there is one flower that is a different colour, and you think its so unique. You go over to take a look at it...
One of my professors does research in nanotechnology. He is currently growing nanotubes in his lab and one of the applications of this technology is as a detector, such as what this plant does, only at the nano-scale. Apparently when the technology matures, detectors of certain types of illnesses can be made. By a drop of blood on the detector, one can learn the results instantly instead of waiting for human analysis. Very cool.
:-)
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
Use something like a crop duster at a highish altitude to drop the seeds all over large areas of land in third world countries. This will make demining so much easier.
If the environmentalists oppose this, if they can engineer the seeds so that the plants can't have offspring (I forget what the term is), they could drop a ton of seeds over a tract of land they plan to demine, and a few months later finding the mines will be very easy.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
OK, seriously, this is great. Too many kids are missing body parts from old munitions.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
i have had this idea for years
it's so obvious.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
OH I DIDN"T KNOW
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
How are you meant to sow the plant without blowing your limbs off?
Aresa has developed a unique method for the detection of landmines in small as well as large areas. Landmines represent a significant problem, especially in the third world, where 26,000 (source:Red Cross) people in average are killed or injured every year. Another significant problem is that large areas of land (in Cambodia estimated 40%, in Angola estimated 90%(source:UN) are unused with severe socio-economic consequences for the population/countries.
On a yearly basis between 200 and 300 m$(source:UN) are spent on demining funded by governments. Further significant amounts are spent as a part of military peacekeeping operations as well as private funds and funds from individual countries improving internal infrastructure. On top, the World Bank issues significant loans with the purpose of clearing land.
Regulations:
The quality guidelines for the clearing of landmines from the United Nations are 99,6% clearance. In practice, however, the clearance should be 100%, before the areas can be brought back to normal. According to UN an area must be checked twice before clearance can be established.
Demining is needed when:
- Refugees are moved back to their homeland like in the case of Afghanistan
- Related to programs regaining lost land
- Related to programs promoting international investments (e.g. South Africa).
- Key areas are developed for different purposes (airports, roads, railroads, in-dustry etc.)
This is the kinda thing Genetic Engineering and Modification should be going into, not for Cheaper prices in the supermarket, or Glowing fish,
Lets see more food in starving country's, Less Landmines, and other ways to improve life,
Of course, thats whats been said about just about any new or improved technology in the last what, 30 years?
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave but don't leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.
Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.
Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.
Anti-Slash
Despite the fact that this flower may save hundreds of lives and thousands of injuries, anti-genetic research people are bound to delay this from being deploied.
I do think that it will need to be tested to make sure it causes no harm, but it is going to be a great help in some war-torn countries.
Mewyn Dy'ner
It's even self-limiting, so despite being a weed it won't choke out the local flora.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Flower power!
California has put in a bid to not allow the flowers to ever be planted. They could cause worldwide destruction much like the Glofish
Beware!
Seeing from massive drops via plane.
(Note, I don't work for Cheapass Games.)
This sig no verb.
Of course, the idea is that these plants should reproduce and grow everywhere...
However, that means we're also disseminating these artificial mutations to the wild.
Isn't it risky to release this beast and let it proliferate and perhaps cross-breed with other species? What are the long-term consequences of doing this?
I guess it might look funny: imagine walking through a wonderful, green, grass field where there are some red spots all around.
"Mom, we're going out to play soccer!"
"Ok boys, take care and watchout for the red grass!"
Still, if it grows quickly and is easily adaptable to all kind of grounds, it could be an excellent way to remove mines in large dangerous zones.
Develop the next generation flower that detonates itself, taking out the mine, instead of just turning a different color. You'd probably risk being gunned down by airport security for carrying flowers, but progress comes at a price ...
This seems like a great idea to me. The main problem I see though is getting the flowers to grow in the soil where landmines have been planted. I mean, minefeilds don't seem like fertile places to me.
or by clearing a small strip of land through a suspected field. But then, that would require reading the frigging article.
Oh the conflict.. those who are so passionately against landmines and genetic engineering will have to choose!
Me? I choose landmines that explode into flowers, which we can all dance around, happy with joined hands singing Peace on Earth
The Technology [Subpage]
The biodetection system of Aresa, which is in the process of being intellectually protected, may be introduced in different plant types. The biodetection system is currently being developed using the plant Thale Cress (Arabidopsis thaliana).
The underlying biochemical mechanism by which the colour change of the genetically plants occurs is based on altering the regulation of the natural pigment biosynthetic pathways in the plants.
Plants normally go red or redish in autumn where the red pigments dominate over the green ones, or as a result of stressed growth conditions. The genetically engineered plants are modified in a way that only allows these plants to go red if triggered by a specific stimulus present in the soil. The stimulus is unique to the plant dependent on the actual application that is pursued with the specific plant. Stimuli may be heavy metals, or NO2 that evaporates when explosives are reduced in the soil. Such stimuli trigger the production of a key-enzyme in the biochemical pathway responsible for production of the group of red pigments called anthocyanins. The resulting colour change is expected within 3-6 weeks dependent on the growth conditions.
The plant:
There are many reasons for choosing the plant Thale Cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) as a first choice for development of the biotetection system:
- The plant has a fast growth rate (growth cycle of 6-8 weeks).
- The plant is naturally growing all around the world (except from the poles)
- The plant is a well studied genetic model system, thus, data, knowledge are available.
- It is a true advantage that the plant is an obligate self-pollinating plant in order to avoid spreading of genetically engineered plants to the environment.
- Male-sterility can be introduced into the genetically engineered plants in order to eliminate the risk for spreading pollen. Thus, the plants developed by Aresa neither germinate nor set seeds unless a specific growth hormone is added to the plants, so plant growth can be strictly controlled.
The hard part is tilling and planting the mine field first!
Don't GM crops cost a lot to develop? I can imagine a third world country struggling to pay for enough of these plants to cover all potentially dangerous areas. Still, it is basically a brilliant idea, though it is still important to make sure anti-personnel mines are not used in the first place, and this organism is only necessary in the battlefields where wars were fought in the past.
Mod parent up!
Sure, out in the African bush you would not expect to find fertilisers but I extect some of the mine hot zones in Asia are fertilised quite heavily.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Landmines are a HUGE problem in so many countries. Engineers Without Borders has a yearly competition for de-mining technology. These plants could make the new devices obsolete.
One quick question: what about minefields in the desert? Plenty of places have mines where plants don't usually grow (or at least not densely enough for the plants to detect them all).DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okNow, crossbreed them with those heatbeam-shooting Ringworld sunflowers, and you've got something that detects mines, and then blows them up.
Now, how do you get rid of the fields of killer sunflowers covering the landscape? Errmm. sorry, didn't hear that. Gotta go...
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
so is there a hack for microsoft minesweeper?
WhatMeWorry
This is ground-breaking technology and it's really cool to see it work to say lives. But I wonder what unintended consequences may occur from planting weeds around. This is very ignorant of me, but what effects could they have if they spread too fast or whatever since some areas where there are landmines are actually agricultural. I guess this technology could be used on other types of plants too, right?
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Flowers will smell a lot better than the smell added to natural gas.
Maybe they could grow a flower that turns colors in th presence of methane... all that geek ass-gass could be useful!
All you have to do is look at the numbers in the adjacent boxes.
People are so lazy!
Princess Diana, for one, would have been very happy to see this development. Although her calling a ban on international landmines sparked a row as it was out of sync with the government policy.
Definitely one of the better use of genetics.
Free XBox, PS2
Since (IMHO) nitrogen-dioxide is likely to be present in areas where munitions/explosives have been used. That would result in false positives since minefields by definition are likely to be in areas where explosives etc. have been expended.
They should make a condom that contains plant material that can detect STD's and change colors accourdingly.
Landmines are fairly small devices so a high plant density would be required. Much land is not easily planted - esp by airplane. It will have to be a remarkable plant to grow in all the conditions it will be needed. They would need one variety for paddy fields, another for savanna, etc etc. To have a chance of getting growing plants in sufficient density you would have to plough the land first.
Paul Beardsell
Sorry, I thought this was about flowers detecting mimes. I was so looking forward to using this during my next trip to New York City. My mistake.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
No sacrificial gardeners needed.
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
The article already states that these flowers cannot reproduce.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
Then watch them bloom.
sulli
RTFJ.
There is something marvelously just and poetic about using flowers to detect land mines. Thousands of children and innocents a year are blown to giblets, or horribly hutilated, by land mines. May a thousand flowers bloom.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Within three to six weeks from being sowed over land mine infested areas the small plant, a Thale Cress, will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine. later... Dogs and metal detectors are also often used. Why don't they just stick to dogs and metal detectors? Seems that would be a lot faster and more efficient.
If you RTFA you would have noticed that they modified these weeds so they can't reproduce. Kind of like in Jurassic Park.
...I've just been using my binoculars.
"Landmine spotted, check your command map."
I didn't even notice a "gardner" class in the limbo screen...
-JDF
These plants could be a really inexpensive way of exposing landmines. I really hope this project works out.
Why don't they just stick to dogs and metal detectors?
Yeah, having dead dog parts all blasted all over the countryside is one reason I really love doing this the old fashioned way.
But I wonder what happens when it misses some of the mines (E.g. Mines too deep, too new, plant did not grow close enough too it). That kind of defeats the purpose of doing this if they have to double back over the entire field to make sure they have not missed any. I think the idea is awesome, but not fool proof. And the fact that these seeds have to survive, and beat out other plants in the area. I think it is totally fascinating, and a creative idea, but seems to have a very small range of effective uses.
Sorry for responding to my own post, I have something to add:
How can we know the plant will survive? Most areas of the word already have whatever vegetation they can support, so a random plant introduced there probably not survive:
The solution is simple: Just modify whatever naturally grows there. If you only add/change one gene, that changes the plant's color, you can also be sure the plant won't disrupt the ecosystem, it'll just be exactly the same plant that already grows there in a different color.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
If you had read the article, you would know that the plants have been engineered to be sterile. Much like the GM corn crops that Monsanto (evil bastards) sells.
Of course, that doesn't mean that something couldn't go wrong, and we end up with a breeding specimen.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
if they can engineer the seeds so that the plants can't have offspring (I forget what the term is)
Plant castration?
Landmines are usually placed fairly close to the surface - if the plants are seeded fairly thickly they should get everything in a given area.
Don't plants already turn red around landmines? When somebody finds one, anyway.
And no GM is not good, and in this instance it will just be used to justfy more mines.
GM is quite good. The opposition to it is one of the best examples of irrational hysteria going today.
This certainly gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'flower power'!
Titus Barik
Perhaps they should think of naming it after Princess Diana since she was a champion of landmine dangers and victims.
Actually, they're called "terminator seeds".
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
nt=no text
some gentically modified weed to fool drug testing. This would be a real befefit to mankind.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Oh, you mean: "teach them C++"
This is a repost from that awful "Jihad" Bullshit.
"What'd you do, go around and look up all the dinosaurs skirts?"
If you read Jurassic Park, or saw the movie, you'd also know "that a population entirely composed of female members... will... breed?"
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Get ready for these things to be banned because of fears that they'll find there way into salads.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
highish altitude to drop the seeds all over large areas of land in third world countries.
u mean the countries ravaged by the "first world" with their uninterrupted supply of landmines?
What we need now is a genetically modified program that will seek out unwanted software companies and attack them.
Exactly. It wouldn't surprise me that the US (being the worlds largest makers of anti-personal landmines) have devised a way to block it.
The US is not a problem at all in the mine fields: it tends to clean up the mines when the conflicts are over. The real problems are the rogue countries that sell and place them willy-nilly, and never bother with removing them.
I mean, there'll probably be hundreds, if not thousands, of flowers that DON'T change color for every mine detected. What then? I mean, like, there are going to be FLOWERS EVERYWHERE!
They should have made them edible, too. Solve world hunger and the land mine problem in one fell swoop....
Gee, that's exactly what they're doing. Who'd uh thunk it?
Ah yes, this is /., where people see the little green underlines that go to the fucking article and say, ooooo, shiny! Wonder what that does, oh never mind, let's go blather.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
If Thale Cress is brown you can cross the field too
This is most likely the approach intended and these plants are already sterile (that term you were looking for).
I personally think that we should lock the humanitarians and the environmentalists in a little room and whoever comes out gets to decide whether the plants are sterile or fertile. If they're fertile then you've got a useful tool for any poor villager to use to check his own fields. Even sowing by hand, w/ a 3-4 week development time, he could start from a known-safe area and at least mark the dangerous areas of his field and get back to growing/harvesting food for his family. Richer poor villagers could follow a herd of livestock through the field in order to trade a few animals for a quicker reclamation of the field. (Quicker because you can segment the field and work on more edges.)
Of course, this is only the first half of a 2 part problem. The second part is how to render safe the landmines, once you know where they are? I personally vote to use spammers and virus writers to dig out and detonate the devices. Each incident of violation (spam recieved/computer infected) requires the removal of 1 mine. I'm a civilized person, so airfare, food and lodging would be provided... health insurance may be problematic, however.
RTFA. Both suggestions are covered in the article.
so that the plants can't have offspring (I forget what the term is)
The technical term is "slashdot reader".
I was thinking more in terms of the friggin' sunflowers with friggin' lasers on their petalled heads.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
where the huskies go...
I can't help but think of painted tanks and
Oh, now reassuring. That means they're going to reproduce, escape to the mainland, and make several bad sequels, right? :)
-1, "1337" speak
This might also be useful for World War I battlefields in France and Belgium, where a number of farmers are killed every year by unexploded shells buried underground.
sPh
Now my wife will want a dozen of the red ones for Valentine's Day. Oh well, it was nice trolling with you guys. See you on the other side.
Unless they grow in Sand in 120degree temperatures, they aren't going to be useful where we need them them most.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Jurassic Park was fake, I'm not saying this isn't possible, but your basing your evidence on a fictional movie which used that to generate sequels
Sounds too much like sex!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Vasectomy.
This seems like a truely great idea that could save many lives and convert danegerous land to a usefull purpose. Some obvious questions come to mind. How hardy are these weeds? Can they grow in desert like climates? Also how do you get rid of the weeds once your ready to grow new crops
Rumor has it that these flowers also change colors in the presence of orcs. Apparently, one of the deleted scenes on the extended edition of RotK is going to show Sam in action with his trusty flower.
beating out other plants in the area might not be so hard... they could torch the area if it already has plantlife there and drop these seeds as soon as the flames die out...
I think this is a great idea, and could be very beneficial... for example, they drop the seeds, and then a little while later fly over the field, and if there's no colored flowers, they do a quick scan on foot and then they're done... if they see alot of colored flowers, they know something's down there, so they focus their search in that area for a while. this way they're not wasting all their resources combing the first field with nothing in it...
genetically modified weed
Heheheh. MMmmm.
violets are blue
roses are read
if i change colour
stand here and you're dead
Look, I do my field research in the Balkans. There are still swathes of ground you'd better not fucking walk unless you are absolutely sure there are no mines. Even near Plitvice Park in Croatia, there are still quarantined areas within 150 meters of the 'main' road to Gracac. If you need to stop and take a dump in nature (few places to do it otherwise there), you better know the words for "Danger Mines."
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
The article states
The use of land mines was outlawed in the 1997 Ottawa Convention and more than 90 countries committed themselves last year to cleaning up the debris of war to reduce the number of civilian casualties from munitions left by armed conflicts.
However, the USA was not a signatory to this treaty as of 2002, according to this web page. Apparently there were plans to sign in 2006, but the landmine-lovers were working to change those. Has anything changed?
There aren't many other countries that were both democratic and non-signatories: Finland, India, Israel, Korea, Russia, Turkey (but the democracy of some of those might be questionable). The entire "Axis of Evil" made the list, though.
Story is light on detail.
- How close does a flower have to be to the mine?
- Do mines reliably release what the plant looks for?
- How hard is it to keep the flowers alive? Does their performance depend on them growing a certain amount?
A few questions that come to mind straight away. Presumably the company is thinking about these things but it's early to say yet. Also, this is for use on farmland, which makes more sense.This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
They should make a flower like a dandelion that disintegrates when you touch it. All of its neighbors that aren't on top of landmines should also disintegrate, leaving behind on the ground a number indicating the number of their neighbors who are growing on top of land mines.
nor smoke it !
Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow
Was create a mine that doesn't evaporate that perticular gaz.... or any gaz at all !
Dropping a load of superballs from 30,000 feet would resolve the problem immediatly!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Free pot for everybody!!!!
Brought to you by the Gay Nigga Pot Smokers
Will these flowers be genetically engineered to have numbers on them, indicating how many mines are growing in the plots next to them?
There are billions of people in these third world countries, there most certainly aren't billions of landmines. Just round up an, make 'em walk and finish the job once and for all.
This sounds like a cheap and inexpensive way to deal with our tremendous overpopulation problem.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
It seems to me like the background of their website could use some mine-clearing! Watch where you click, kiddies!
webpage
The monsanto plants have a nasty tendency to cross polinate with local plants. Of course when this happens Monsanto is nice enough to sue the farmers whose fields have been infested. Yay for gene patents.
A blog about stuff.
This is an interesting technology but not something that I personally would rely on. The consequences of a few false negatives would be disasterous. Just because that field planted with mine detecting weeds is filled with flowers of only one colour doesn't mean that there are no mines out there.
Celebrities are like ads, if we all ignore them, they'll just go away.
For those who are curious, here is a picture of the little guy in bloom - presumably, the entire plant turns red (stem and all) in the presence of NO2, not just the flowers.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Sounds like a swell idea, so long as I don't have be the guy that walks throught the field and plants the seeds...
kabloom.com
I heard that the US Government paid Microsoft millions of dollars to have them include copies of minesweeper.
Yeah, seems like a harmless game, but rumor has it if you win 100 times in a row you'll be contacted by a secret agent and whisked away to an underground weapons training facility where they send you out on various missions across the world dismantling the existing mines.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
You'd think with an expensive plant seed you'd want to target areas that mines are suspected, not all of Europe. Great idea tho, finally a true innovation.
I wouldn't trust my life to these. Just because they are planted in a mined area does not mean that they detect all the mines out there. In this case, the consequenses of a false negative result is devastating. Just because all the genetically modified flowers are one colour, don't go into the field.
Celebrities are like ads, if we all ignore them, they'll just go away.
Roses are blue,
Violets are red,
Step on these flowers,
and you'll be maimed or dead
Eventually, some patriotic genetic engineers will build a flower that will change color after hearing Top Government Officals perjure themselves.
Thanks and a have propaganda-filled week,
Kilgore Trout
The way the explaind it on a danish news channel, was that, the mine people first clear a path, then a truck/car sprays the weeds to each side. As far as I recall it was many meters that it could trow.
SCO's security team just purchased a truckload.
I'm no EOD tech, but maybe finding the little buggers is 98% of the problem. Once they are found a person could either just mark and leave them in place or blow them up.
Once the weeds mark the mines, a rich villager could call in the army or police and they will lay a few dollars worth of detonating cord next to the mines and clear the field at 20,000 feet per second. Or the army guy could sit back and take shots at the mines from beyond the minimum safe difference.
The poorer and/or depressed villager could tie a rope onto a chunk of tree or a rock, heave the weight on the other side fo the marked area, get behind a tree and then give the rope a good pull.
Obviously these methods have problems. both would leave a lot of fragments flying around, and are not exactly risk free for the person doing the job.
Call me a cruel, heartless bastard, but this isn't oing to be a problem. All you have to do is tell the villagers to stay away from a certain area while the work is being done. Anybody that forgets or doesn't get the news is just gonna be SOL. If a hut gets a bunch of fragments thrown thru it, then they will have to spend a day repairing it. No big deal.
From what I've been able to pick up, a few flying chunks of metal is not going to be real high on the worry list for people that have land mine problems. Waking up is a bigger risk. Getting enough food, not getting some god-awful tropical disease or not pissing off the latest dictator is going to fill their worry bin.
Most countries that have real land mine issues are desperately poor and need something like these plants just to cut down on their chances of having their kids legs blown off. Rich countries can solve their problems with robotics and large amounts of beer for their off duty ordinance techs.
Right or wrong, certainty is for rich countries. Bravo to these scientists.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
to distribute a lot of NO2 when you lay your mines.
Irony - using Agent Orange to perform the deforestation.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
One problem with this approach is that while the plants may detect some of the mines, that's no guarantee that the plants didn't miss any. Say a mine field has 10,000 mines. You put down a bunch of seeds, and they detect 9,000 of them. While your odds of stepping on a mine have dropped substantially, there's still 1000 mines out there that you don't know you missed. The area would still need to be cleared by traditional means for it to be truely safe.
and you just walk out into the field and dig
a small hole and...uh...wait a minute...
Um...
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
that digest high explosives & black powder to make the world a safer place.
Until someone comes up with workable laser or gauss rifles...
*sigh*
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If we can genetically modify plants not to make seeds, how long will it be before we can GM Idiots so they don't breed either?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I'd like to know who's going to plant the seeds in the ground :D
BOOOOOM!
kidding aside, I hate the idea of deploying right now geneticaly modified organisms in the wild - they just can't be aware of ALL the repercussions or side effects that will emerge from this action.
-- niker
Weeeeeeeee! We've traded bombs for flowers! Weeeeeeeee! And after that, we can power our tanks with unicorn farts!
; )
If the environmentalists oppose this, if they can engineer the seeds so that the plants can't have offspring (I forget what the term is)
Can't have offspring? But how will we get plants to read Slashdot?
How long until the US--which isn't a signatory to the Mine Ban Treaty--has this flower classified as a bioweapon?
Any HALO (optics) plane will have the capability to scan this same patch of ground in like a 1008th of the time it takes for these things to grow...
Seriously...it would take what a week for these plants to bloom? At least!!
It would take a HALO plane to 10 minutes to pick these things out with a deep penetrating sound scan...
It would be just as cost effective because the plane is already in the vicinity since the area in question would already be under surveilance...
Waste of time and money!
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
>RTFA...
This is slashdot. That would take all the fun away from all these "experts" that glance at the summary and make all kinds of wrong assumptions about what the story might be about and then post authoritative/speculative garbage about things that are covered in the article in the first place.
...all you need is a few bags of NO2-heavy debris sprinkled in the surrounding meadows.
Ie, from what I have seen of Afganistan on TV it looks to be a very dry place... I guess you can plant the seeds via a plane but they are goign to have to follow them with water bombers twice daily!
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
In other news.. Genetically Modified Flower Detects Weapons of Mass Destruction!
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
No need for genetic engineering, Slashdot takes care of that. The couple of guys that can reproduce depite Slashdot and the presence of shiny new things are the smart ones.
Humor, but whatever works.
Actually there's an easy way to stop morons from breeding - just go to a polling place, and if they vote for liberal democrats, then castrate them.
This will tie up the crazy anti GM activist with fighting the crazy anti mine activists, and leave sane people free to go about their lives.
Love it!
Drop cannabis seeds all over the area....the mines will become apparent as the local stoners try and harvest the crop :-)
-psy
If this isn't poetic/postapocoliptic I don't know what is. Truth, always stranger then fiction.
Quack, quack.
Just let some sheep loose in the field.
They'll find the land mines and they're non-GM.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Elton John will write a song about it, too. :-P
You plant landmines, we plant flowers.
"FEED ME!"
Reporters backed away quickly...
All I could focus on while reading this article was "What would flash through the mind of the flowers as they turned red?"
"Oh no, Not again."
"We're also working on military applications of tomatoes. These tomatoes are really killer!"
They do say the plants are modified to be genetically infertile and unable to spread their own seeds.
Note that this is not done to be nice to the environment.
It is done so that anyone using this must pay for each flower seed, rather than simply scattering a bunch of seeds and letting them grow and reproduce.
May we never see th
...false sense of security?
I didn't say agent orange, did I? I was thinking more about starting fires around the perimiter and letting them burn inwards until there's nothing left.
Can you back this up with proof? I'm quite dubious that the US sends more soldiers out after wars to clean up its old mine fields.
May we never see th
now if they can get the "poppies, row on row," in Flander's fields, to do the same! (or do they turn red to detect... blood?)
Maybe I am missing a valid point to these flowers... (I agree that is it definitely cool that an organic life form can inherently detect chemicals and display a warning) ...But isn't that a bit long to wait?
I would suspect that there are better ways to detect mines. Any military personnel, or nerds posing as such want to explain some of the alternatives, and why these flowers might be better?
Detects NOZ!
But maybe its me today only...
... or they'll have to send in the daisy-cutters to trim them back when they get too long.
Captain: Company, halt!! This empty stretch of land looks a bit suspicious. Soldier: Want me to call in the plants, Sir? Captain: Aye, soldier. Alright, men, let's rig up some form of irrigation so we can water these babies. Soldiers: Yes, sir! Captain: Johnson, you still have that deck of playing cards? We are going to be here a while... -- 3 to 6 weeks later -- Soldier: Sir, it looks clear. No red flowers. Captain: Oh well, guess I was wrong. Foward, march!
No, but then you have to worry about the PETA people. Frankly, I don't know know which on is worse...
Well, I for one welcome our new plant overlords.
What? What do you mean they're helping us?! That's absurd!
Learn something new.
As long as your spreading seed by airplane, just use bird seed... let the birds find the mines!
I think some of those weed genes were around when I was a kid in my parents yard.
:)
But the ones at my parents house only detected dog poop and septic tanks. And they changed the grass from its natural beige color to strange dark-green hue.
(flamesuit on)
Sometimes good fences make good neighbors. While I detest landmines, not everyone plays by "rules" of warfare and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to keep the other guys on their side.
Warfare is a terrible, bloody, and cruel business. Deal with it.
Personally, if I have to chose which side I am on, well, count me with the side that uses ALL of it's resources to win -- at all costs -- because I assure you, that is *exactly* what the other guys are doing.
afaik some ingredients of landmines are known to support the growth of Grass and Flowers. You may have noticed that in many action movies the people build explosives from fertilisers *g* ;)
Regards,
TheChromedAccountant
nothing personal, just business.
What an array of color. This has to be the coolest invention of 2004 and it's still January. This shows you what hope we really have to gain for the rest of the year.
People still find unexploded cannonballs in their backyards dating back to the British/French colonial war.
They just use metal detectors though.
I haven't read about the technology but I would think that this would never work. I mean if some dude is out there planting plants/flowers right where the mine is chances are he's going to set it off. Right?
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Landmines are considerably smaller than 2 ft. The air delivered anti-personnel mines are more like 3 inches across. I believe this is the type that is the biggest maimer/killer.
The resolution observation is interesting and valid. Precisely locating the mines would require a dense flower pattern. But it you just need to give the EOD team a general place to look, then a bigger spread is ok.
So all genetically modified plants are a good thing?
Have you heard of the "Roundup Ready" GM corn plants? Basically their purpose is to allow farmers to pour more pesticide on their crop (think about effects to soil and water), and to "lock in" customers.
Furthermore, farmers who develop Organic Certified crops have their livelihoods threatened/destroyed when a GM crop moves in next door.
Monsanto's Roundup-Ready Canola
Small print: you need to plow the minefield first.
Since GM bioproducts are forbidden for use there.
Oh, yeah, and many African countries can't use them, since the EU has blackmailed them into similarly refusing GM or have their agri products blackballed.
Sorry!
-Styopa
This is a sentence fragment. Good thing we have editors to fix these problems!
I thought anything geneticaly modified was categoricaly bad?!?!?!
I thought geneticaly modifying plants could cause evil things, things that were so evil they were not worth feeding poor people in third world countries???
Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone?
(cynicism provided by a dude that thinks that geneticaly modified food stuff is getting bad rap by a bunch of commie wackos)
*despite
the plant is infertile, so it won't spread into unwanted areas.
;-)
You haven't seen Jurassic Park huh?
You can't take the sky from me...
What if the had genetically modified flowers to turn colors when on top of oil or coal deposits? Would you guys still approve?
What is even more amazing is that this breakthrough comes from Europe where scientists working in biotech seed are treated like common criminals and frequently have their research plots destroyed by enviro-terrorists.
Begs the question whether Paul and Heather McCartney will now finally have something good to say about biotech seed?
Will European politicians who urged African nations to reject donations of biotech grain from the US to feed their starving people actually recommend the use of this plant?
Man Holmes
Sheesh, all those PhD's and they haven't spotted that - dumb.
they should have hired a smart guy like me for the team.
My family lives in Cambodia (both NGO workers), one of the most mined countries on earth.
Kids still die everyday because they step on landmines. There are anti tank mines, that will kill you, antipersonal mines, that will cripple you, and UXO (unexploded ordnance) that can do about anything.
You go to the market in certain places in Cambodia, and you see that almost 10% (no kidding) of the population is crippled, one or both legs missing, sometimes an arm... Shit.
Worse: Cambodia has huge monsoon rains, and the floods eventually transform into torrents. So the mines MOVE with time. So there you are, happily walking on a path that has been un-mined last year, and BOOM, the rain had brought a mine right there. Scary.
Even worse. Sometimes UXO (more rarely, mines) go right into the city, because of some construction site that uses sand dug from out of the city, and that has UXO's inside (rare, but it happened to one of our friends doing construction for his NGO).
Anything that can be used in demining should be. You might think that demining mostly occurs in rice fields and stuff but no, in some remote places over there, they have to clear villages *house by house*, garden by garden. There are still millions (litteraly) of landdmines scattered everywhere, and even though the foreign demining teams, and the Cambodians they have trained, do a great job, it never will be enough.
Still, Cambodia is one of the most beautiful countries on earth. Now, most touristic-and-not-so-touristic places are safe, so go there, but stay away from anywhere the locals tell you to NOT go.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
The company "hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years". Vaporware?
Also, are there real cost advantages to use that over, say, little rovers with metal detectors? What percentage of the cost of clearing landmines is spent on detection?
And, as many people have mentionned already, there are a few places with desert conditions where this approach won't be useful.
While this is nice technology (and they at least took care to make the plants infertile, which is great), I don't know if it will have any practical applications. In the meantime, I suggest either badgering your gummint to fund clean up efforts and/or donating to NGOs that are de-mining.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
U.N.-centric place to start.
A few black & white pics
Field manual references
From what i'm seeing on the links, manual de-mining is still the gold standard, but an accident will happen for about every 2000 mines destroyed. That sucks, and there can't be that many people that have the skills and balls to do that work. These marking weeds may have to be better than waiting for a charity de-mining!
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
"you pick the blue flower, the story ends, you wake up tomorrow thinking I have a pretty flower, you pick the red flower, you go to wonderland, and you see how deep the rabbit hole blows."
"hold onto your seats, cause Kansas, is going bye bye!"
The original generic sig.
>The genetically modified weed that has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide Wait, wait, is this the same weed I had last weekend? Cuz I swear that I could detect NO2 as well. Maybe it was just me. . . If not, how can I get some?
Most fertilizer is some kind of nitrate (NO3)... ammonium nitrate, etc. High explosives, such as the type commonly used in munitions, are actually N02 compounds, rather than simple nitrates. The nitrates/nitrites are often used in explosives as the oxidizing agent, sometimes in an internal REDOX reaction, sometime to oxidize an additional reagent. As a fertilizer bomb example, the explosive used in the OK city bombing was basically ANFO (acronym for Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil). It's an explosive agent commonly used in mining, and has a lower brisance rating than most military explosives. Brisance refers to the shattering power of a given explosive, and has to do with the speed or rate of deflagration. ANFO is relatively slow compared to some other agents, and military explosive can be much faster: For instance, if you were a combat engineer taking down concrete bridge pilings, you'd want to take advantage of a faster agent to shatter the concrete, rather than a a slower agent that tends to "burn", rather than rapidly detonate.
For example, Tritonol (trade name for the common explosive TNT, or 2,4,6-TrinitroToluene) is three nitro groups on a Benzene ring (a CH3 group at the number 1 position makes the base molecule Toluene, rather than conventional benzene). A certain percentage of TNT is actually DNT, since the compound deteriorates over time and loses a Nitro Group (becoming 2,4-DiNitroToluene. It takes some work to actually produce a high yield of TNT during the manufacturing process, rather than DNT... progressive deactivation of the ring occurs with addition of multiple N02 groups, though you can manipulate reaction conditions to push the reaction to completion.
Another example would be the Picrate compounds... used during WWI. They are not used much anymore... too hazardous to handle. Picric Acid is chemically very close to TNT, except it's 2,4,6-TrinitroPhenol (think of TNT with the CH3 group exchanged for an alcohol, or OH group, making the base molecule Phenol, rather than Toluene).
The study of high explosives is actually quite fascinating... particularly when you get into the physics of the blast waves themselves. Hang out with bomb or EOD guys if you get the chance; they're geeks with high explosives.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Ever tried detecting landmines... ON WEED?
The biggest problem will be that nitrous oxide naturally occurs in some soils; your false positive rate would be high. Moreover, as explosives rot and decay in the ground, the residue spreads out over a fairly large area. Many military bases are plagued with "pink water" from TNT leachate, for example. As a result, a single landmine might produce a fairly large disc of activity, meaning you'd still need to manually probe for the landmine. In some cases, these are nothing more than plywood boxes, which rapidly degrade when put in place in areas that receive plenty of rainfall. In war-torn areas, trying to find something like this after it has aged, even when you have a rough idea of where it might be, is still hazardous and time-consuming.
Next to this, the biggest problem is going to be that the plant being used is not capable of growing in very dry areas, where landmines are a serious issue (Angola, Namibia, Afghanistan, etc.). Even worse are areas like Kosovo, which receive so much rainfall that the vegetation has grown up and around landmines; wet areas like this have grown trees tall enough to make detection and removal a very serious problem. Large areas are not safely traversable once one leaves pavement, much less mow so that weeds like those used to detect explosives simply won't be visible. They're not tall enough.
There is no panacea to landmines, and although it's good to see one possibility, I doubt many people in the business of landmine removal will find this to be a useful technique, much less stake their lives on it. The folks doing the tinkering in the lab have little or no idea what it's like in the field. It is a very, very difficult problem that a lot of smart people have spent a lot of time on. And it's still not enough.
Now if they could hold onto the properties of the landmines, this would be perfect for that no-longer-special person in your life.
"Actually, they're called "terminator seeds"."
[insert Arnold quote of choice here]
meh
And an enemy can plant them during the conflict and use the flowers as a countermeasure. I wonder how long it will be before North Korea gets some.
sulli
RTFJ.
until the environmentalists go wacko over this one?
GloFish couldn't reproduce either but that didn't stop them from getting pushed out of stores.
DDT in small not even remotly lethal doses sprayed on houses is enough to keep malaria ridden mosquitoes at bay for months.
That doesn't stop the evironmentalist wackos from forbidding that money be spent on DDT for that purpose. So the result is that millions are dying from malaria while a deterant is on the other side of a glass table that would buy time while a cure is developed.
In case any of you were wondering if the human life cost benefit had anything to do with what environmentalists forbid being used in an effort to save lives.
This will be cool as soon as they start using it. In the mean time I'm going to assume the wackos are going to pull another DDT stunt.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
But it is a bit different. Four years ago I was working on a project peripherally related to getting rid of landmines. There are strains of bacteria found on old World War 2 mutitions factories where bacteria have evolved the ability to take various explosive compounds such as trinitrotoluene (TNT) and metabolize them. The idea at the time was to elucidate the pathway that allowed these bacteria to do the chemistry, and engineer an organism (almost certainly bacteria) to express the pathway plus green fluorescent protein (GFP). You spray it over a minefield and you get bacteria with the ability to metabolize TNT or other explosive compounds colonizing the area around the mine and begin degrading the TNT that slowly leaks from it. The vicinity around the mine turns green from the expression of GFP (or another member of the GFP family; color of different members nearly spans the visible spectrum) making the mine visible. After the explosive material is exhausted the introduced engineered bacteria give way to the native bacteria, as the selective pressure keeping the TNT-eaters present is gone. It looks like this plant-based product is closer to practical application, however.
Also there have been a number of plants, some engineered and some not, that have been used in various bioremediation projects. That said, this IMHO is the most elegant one I know of.
I've seen this somewhere before... Where was it...?
Oh yeah... Right here.
I tell ya folks, it's uncanny...
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Of course the link was supposed to send you here but it apparently tripped on a html landmine, thus becoming crippled.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Take a look at these live fire videos.
Thanks for the link. I imagine you could replace a mine field with a line of lead.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Well, now we can do both.
In all seriousness, though, this is one of the best ideas I've heard of for dealing with land mine detection and removal. Presuming the color change is visible from the air, aerial recon. photos would give engineers enough detail to know exactly where the mines are, then via GPS, locate and remove them with impressive speed.
Of course, the article didn't say if the coloration was visible from the air or not, so that may not even be possible.
NO2 is naturally produced as part of the nitrogen cycle. Bomb teams are going to spend a lot of time investigating last years manure droppings.
well _my_ professor grows nanotubes with two bits o' string and chicken wire. none of that sissy labratory stuff.
and his nanotubes go at least twice the speed of light. they laugh at drops of blood and eat babies.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Your post needs more love
Oh my. A real life Mine Sweeper game. Thousands of flowers and only some are red. Which adjoing flower is sitting on top of a land mine. Did Microsoft patent Minesweeper ? If so, do we now have leave all the land mines where they lie ? Lou Sir
1997 Mine Ban Treaty - NON SIGNATORIES
This is the list of the 44 countries that have not signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty as of 23 October 2003.
(Source International Campaign to Ban LandminesGreat!
Of course we have to now plant the thing everywhere the US has been involved in wars ( basically everywhere ) and we also have to pay the company whatever they're asking price is.
But I'm sure the US will cough up for the costs associated with cleaning up after their inhumane use of land minds across the globe.
article:
Mine Ban Treaty
The Mine Ban Treaty obligates its participants to completely and permanently discontinue the use, production, stockpile, and transfer of antipersonnel landmines; to destroy stockpiles within four years; to clear mines within their own territories within ten years, and to provide continuing assistance to mine survivors.
The Mine Ban Treaty, which went into effect on March 1, 1999, has been signed by nearly three quarters of the world's nations; it came into force faster than any other multi-lateral global agreement. Participants include all of the western hemisphere except the United States and Cuba, and all NATO countries except the United States and Turkey, though Turkey is in the process of acceding to the treaty. Most African nations and many Asian nations have joined the Mine Ban Treaty as well. For the full text of the Mine Ban Treaty, a list of countries that have signed, ratified, or not signed the treaty,
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
"The article already states that these flowers cannot reproduce."
Have you learned nothing from Jurassic Park!? Life will find a way! I mean, nobody wanted Jurassic Park 3 to be made, but it found a way....
Hum...my first thought was that they make the plants wear Birkenstocks.
GDR
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Sure, I invent watermelon plants who's tasty fruit changes color the closer they are to landmines and they call me history's greatest monster
Someone does it with crabgrass and they are a humanitarian.
Gather up all of the flying rats(pigeons) from all of the cities of the world. Spread grain instead of mutant flower seeds and let the birds loose.
What if the flowers have bugs in them? Perhaps they won't change color even if there's a mine beneath them. What do you say about that, when a thousand children are blown to smithereens, huh?
THIS IS THE INTERNET. PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SERIOUS BUSINESS SUIT AT THE FRONT COUNTER.
A: Very carefully.
we've heard this one before... Jurassic Park, anyone?
Nature evolves. Unfortunately, some people don't.
America offered to sign this treaty. We liked this treaty. Landmines make no distinction between civilian and military personnel. They maim and kill civilians. However, the U.S. made it clear that the use of landmines within designated demilitarized zones was within the rules of war. And within what the United States considered "fair play".
There had never been a coherent case why landmines can't be used in, for example, the DMZ between North and South Korea. There are no civilians there. No civilians would ever "blunder into" this area. In fact, it's impossible to trespass even if that's your intention . Landmines are there for the express purpose of destroying an invading army. That's the military's job: to kill enemy soldiers and armor.
If the ICBL had acceded to this U.S. condition, we would have signed on. In fact, Clinton issued an executive order which de facto banned the use of landmines outside of declared demilitarized zones which were free of civilians. To be blunt, everywhere except the Korean DMZ.
Has anyone got a good reason why landmines are a bad thing in such an area? They don't kill people any more dead than a machine gun would. And please skip arguments involving civilian casualties, since there aren't any civilians anywhere near the landmines. In fact, by killing soldiers in an area far from civilian populations, such landmines would certainly reduce civilian casualties in a conflict.
Oh. that's the reason you sell all those landmines to the third world....
You guys are just standing up for what is right and fair
got it , thanks
where we have substantial mechanization of agriculture, and we use lots of fertilizer and herbicide and pesticide and supplemmental irrigation, are not necessarily the same characteristics that will give greater productivity in 3rd world agricultural systems. Not to mention that, as stated elsewhere here, there isnt a shortage of food. The US consumes about 3000 calories daily per capita. That means if we simply didnt consume the 1000 or so calories of excess food that is making so many of us fat, we could feed one person quite well for each two americans. That is food for about 125 million people, just by giving up US consumption waste and overeating. Factor in all the meat we eat, at about a 10x reduction in calories going from feed to meat, and all the fallowed land we use to keep down excess production, and the Unites States alone could take care of a several hundred million hungry people in the world while actually making our own food consumption patterns healthier
What about AFTER the conflict? One of the main problems with landmines is that they hang around after the conflict has finished, unless they're detonated.
But then again, it's not hard to miss just one, maybe two, especially if you aren't organised (like some non-US armies may be).
Has anyone got a good reason why landmines are a bad thing in [demilitarized zones]?
What happens in 20, 50, 100 years when the issues that caused the DMZ to be created have been resolved and the DMZ is eliminated? Are you just going to say "this area is off limits forever because we didn't foresee the end of hostilities"?
You've kind of got all the mines contained. Once you don't need 'em, you send a few really heavy remote sentry type vehicles through and blow 'em all up.
The best way to clear mine fields is the Iranian way.
You go to the schools and round up a whole bunch of kids.
Then you give them all little plastic keys to heaven to wear around their necks.
Then you get them all to wrap their arms around each other's shoulders and march them across the mine fields, all yelling 'Allah Akbar!!'.
Then you go to their parent's houses later that evening and over a cup of tea tell them how proud they should be now their kid is in heaven.
You don't need no jive-ass flowers...
it looks like a prety frail plant, wouldn't it have been better to do it with something with much bigger leaves so it would stand out better.?
I wonder how successful the plant grows in desert conditions? Is it suitable for all terrains (i.e. Soggy, rice fields and all)? For the current situation in Iraq and Afganistan, I would think successful desert growth would be a priority.
Shit - If I was a Baltic state, or Finland, I certainly won't want to be denied using landmines to even the odds a bit when the Ruskies change their minds and decide they want to restore the old Glorious Russian Empire by annexing .. err reacquiring former states...
..
.. well, if they would I bet they
And, somehow I think both the Indians and Pakistanis like landmines between the 2 of them.
Makes another war harder
likewise the Koreas..
And Israeli
would love to have a lot more landmines between themselves and the rest of their neighbors..
seriously, the only reason why the bloody brits don't care about keeping landmines is that THEY not next to anyone anymore! Surrounded by this giant frick'n moat. Don't even need landmines to protect HK against the Reds anymore.
yup - U beat Princess Di would have been told to shut her trap had England still had their old empire.
"Male-sterility can be introduced into the genetically engineered plants in order to eliminate the risk for spreading pollen. Thus, the plants developed by Aresa neither germinate nor set seeds unless..." I can see the headlines now: everything was going well until some of the plants, which had some frog genes, randomly changed sexes and they began to spread uncontrollably, eating people as they went.
So, maybe flowers don't stop guns... at least they can stop landmines.
And although it's faster and safer to plant the seeds by plane, we could get rid of both the hippies AND the landmines if we told them they had to plant each seed by hand. Hippies don't work often, but you know how much they like flowers!
Land mines are a highly effective defensive tool. They delay enemy forces, and allow the defender to canalize enemy within well defended areas.
The United States militery, upon laying a mine field, properly marks and maps the location of each mine. When a field needs to be decommissioned, we can go back and recover all of the munitions.
Other countries do not properly mark minefields (Soviet Union in Afganistan for example) or decommission them when hostilites are ended.
Also, the Constitution of the United States will not technically allow us to sign a treaty that weakens the ability of us to defend ourselves if needed. This is why we withdrew from the obsolete ABM treaty with the non-existant Soviet Union.
The restrictions against building an missile defense system cannot remain when set against our law that requires our number one priority to be the defense of the United States.
The stories you hear of children and adults being maimed or killed by land mines are tragic, I agree, and I'd be supportive of eliminating the export/sale of landmines from the US, but most of the issue isn't with US minefields.
Not to mention the fact that many of the signatories to this "treaty" will break their word as soon as it is in their interest to do so. Nor does it stop certain countries that have signed up from selling munitions (France, etc.)
-Crolis
I understand why Finland is on the list. Just look at border between us and our big neighbour.
:-)
Another thing... How will those flower work for example in Western Sahara which is mostly hot desert or in Afganistan where there is only rocky mountains and no soil to grow anything? This flower thing may solve the mine problem in quite limited area where land mines are problem.
--
I don't time have to register to all these sites.
This is great spin, and is true as far as it goes, but the REAL reason the US has not signed the treaty is that we are the world's largest exporter of arms, and banning mines would cost US companies MILLIONS of dollars yearly.
Also, the Constitution of the United States will not technically allow us to sign a treaty that weakens the ability of us to defend ourselves if needed.
I've read the Constitution, and I must have missed that part. But it is a moot point anyway. I can easily make the case that the US military would be stronger if there were no mines - not weaker. Mines are the poor man's fortifications. A strong military force can be held at bay by a much weaker force that employs land mines. Since the US has the strongest military in the world by far, the presence of land mines can only have an overall negative impact on the effectiveness of our military. It's simple logic.
...now all we need to do, is spread genetically engineered biomass all over the world, and hope we got it right so it doesn't totally screw up the eco-system.
:)
If I get this right, we fly in and dump seeds across a field, wait a month or two and go out to pick up the mines? No? They're just there to warn the children? Ok, so when the flowers die, we have to charter another plane to plant new ones? Sounds kind of expensive doesn't it?
\\Mikkel Gjoel
-
PS. Sterile? What happened to the wise words from Jurrasic Park, "Life will find a way"?
Now I am totally in support of this kind of development, but it presents an interesting scenario.
Opposing forces have mined their no man's land. One force plans action in a couple of months and so plants the flower to reveal the mines. The other force notices and pumps out a whole bunch of defoliant to kill the flowers, everyone dies in 20 years from the defoliant.
Nice.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Well, this reminds me of the trained honey bees for land mine detection
the us of a has not i repeat not sold any landmines since 1993
Instead of seeds, lets drop watermellons, when the hit the mines the blow up, and feed the poor!!
Shortly thereafter, the DMZ will be no more.
Can the US government guarantee that it can remove all of the land mines when that time comes?
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
If you know where the mines are - like an already protected DMZ an invading army can clear paths through easily enough.
Probably the smallest issue for a modern invading army is a few landmines.
10. GEORGIA
First they refuse to take down the confederate flag...now this?
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
Thank God no other country would sell arms to third world countries. Except Russia, which sold $5.7 billion worth of arms; Ukraine ($1.6 billion); Italy ($1.5 billion); and Germany and France ($1.1 billion each). (Y2002 figures)
Of course the 2003 figures for France and Germany might be lower now that they can't sell to Iraq.
They blew off onto my wife's dress.
And they grew up in an urban area of Vietnam.
So think again.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
It's not like it's that difficult. If you know that an area is a mine field it's EASY to clear it. It's when you don't know for sure if an area has mines that they become an issue.
And if everyone on the US drank less water, we could turn the deserts in Africa into water parks.
The logic fails because consuming less doesn't get that the difference to where it is needed. As someone else has already pointed out, distribution is the problem.
The genetically modified weed that has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide... ...but does it get you high?
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
The thing is, this plant is a haploid, with only 10 chromasomes. It's one of the easiest plants to work with, genetically. So they probably chose it for that reason.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
The Rhodesian war was so long ago most of the people there now weren't alive then.
The mines are still there.
ie. It's a empty argument, the US needs mines to keep the DMZ, the DMZ is there because the US want's the two Korea's separate. Why? A seperate South Korea must always be deep in US's pocket, a reunified Korea will be truly independent and choose other allies.
with examples as to how much excess production we have sitting this side of that distribution issue.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The above "Informative" comment is 100% horse shit.
The U.S. imposed a one year moratorium on the export of antipersonnel mines in 1992. It was extended for three years in 1993, and again 1996. In 1997, Clinton made it permanent. So whos comment was "spin", hmm?
You are right, but that turns out not to be the whole story. Although I specifically said landmines and not anti-personnel mines I did mistakenly imply that the US manufacturers received profit from the sale of anti-personnel landmines, and that was wrong (but who knows what their offshore subsidiaries do). The US does manufacture and export landmines - just not anti-personnel landmines. But since that was what we were talking about my statement was incorrect. The US has prohibited the transfer of anti-personnel mines since 1992. However, that's not the whole story. In investigating the facts I have discovered that we are not exactly lilly white when it comes to anti-personnel mines either.
US law prohibits the transfer of anti-personnel landmines. However, the US has continued to supply friendly governments with anti-personnel mines on occasion, including Canada and Afghanistan.[UN report] Although the Canadian transfer technically violated both treaty and law, it was probably for testing and disposal training purposes which is OK in my book - but the US law did not prevent us from supplying the new Afghan government with _captured_ supplies of anti-personnel landmines [US GAO report] which is NOT ok in my book.
Also, the US manufactures, sells, and uses cluster munitions. Cluster bombs are not *classified* as anti-personnel mines, but do effectively become that when they do not explode on the initial impact (to hinder runway repair or vehicle recovery efforts). Because the size of the explosive is large enough to disable vehicles they are classified as anti-vehicle mines even though they lay directly on the surface and are triggered by slight movement.
The United States last acknowledged using antipersonnel mines in 1991 in Kuwait and Iraq, scattering 117,634 landmines, 30,000 of which were classified anti-personnel.[US GAO Report] I suspect the rest were cluster munitions. Thankfully, we stopped the practice after there were news reports of children being drawn to the brighty colored butterfly-shaped bombs. There is no information about anti-personnel landmine use in recent and current middle east wars, but I suspect our use is very small with the exception of cluster munitions. Also from the GAO, the US has stockpiled over 10 million anti-personnel mines.
So, I was wrong about the current profit/manufacture/policy links of anti-personnel mines - the US has changed its ways although that link DID exist prior to 1992. However we do manufacture and export anti-vehicle landmines, we do manufacture and sell landmines which although classified anti-vehicle effectively act as anti-personnel mines, and we do transfer captured anti-personnel mines to others.
This is not to say that we are the Great Satan. Our behavior is MUCH better because of policies developed during the Clinton administration, we devote significant resources to mine clearing and awareness, and I hope we continue to improve, particularly in the area of transfering captured anti-personnel landmines.
Must have been a North Korean.
The S.Korean's have always protested the US presence in the country - that is until the US announced it was withdrawing troops to serve elsewhere- then the SK government quickly protested the withdrawal.
I can't imagine anyone one (sane that is) in SK welcoming the NK government in.
The SK govenment is very clear - they want the DMZ and the US troops to keep NK from invading. Not reunifiny - invading.
Definitely South Korean.