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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.
I realize this is a joke, but to stem the flood of responses by people who didn't RTFA, here's the scoop:
You take a plane, fill it with seed "bomblets" and disperse them over a minefield. The bomblets embed in the soil and the plants grow. Within a few months you have a field of plants, a few of which are a different colour. The ones that have changed colour are close to mines. This makes finding the mines easier, and it also makes it possible to find a safe route through the field by only looking at the colour of the plants.
The article already states that these flowers cannot reproduce.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
"Of course, the idea is that these plants should reproduce and grow everywhere..."
No, it isn't. The article specifically states that the plants are sterile and cannot seed.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
and evidently you haven't actually read the article - the plants are infertile (don't themselves produce seeds) to prevent the genetically modified weed from spreading in areas where it isn't wanted.
It is sown from the air or from conventionally cleared strips of land.
It grows in roughly 3 - 6 weeks.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
I think a field full of kudzu is worse than a field full of land mines. After all, you can continue to farm a field of land mines, if you're willing to risk getting blown up. If the field's full of kudzu, you can't farm it any more.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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.
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]
You are correct, sir.
Some plants just grow big, tuborous root systems, which occaisionally sprout up new, baby plants. Some other plants (like ivy and spider plants) send out shooters, hoping that one of them will land on fertile ground, root and grow.
I've forgotten the technical names for those "reproductive" methods, but there you go.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
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!
Anti-tank mines have a diameter of 30-40 cm, are 6-8 cm deep and weigh about 10kg. I can also tell you that it not fun at all to carry 2 or more for several kilometers somewhere in the middle of a Finnish forest.
The largest mines are probably anti-personnel claymore mines. They are something like 25cm high and 50cm wide and produce a huge (50-100m) conical storm of shrapnel. They are however usually attached to a tree or similar structure so that the effect acts horizontally taking out a lot of infantry and perhaps unarmored vehicles. The plants are of no use when looking for these.
There are several kinds of mines that can be dispersed from aircraft. the ones I've seen are Russian and are about 10cm wide, 5cm high and look sort of like butterflies so that they can be packed efficiently and disperse widely when dropped. These are not dug into the ground so I doubt the plant will be of much use in finding them. Now someone is thinking that such small mines that are above the ground shouldn't be a problem, but account for the fact that the a plane can drop several thousands in one run. Combine that with toxic gas and/or napalm and it's a really big problem.
The kinds of mines that the plants are probably used to find are anti-personnel mines dug into the ground. These usually consist of an explosive charge 10cm wide and about 10cm high with some shrapnelling stuff in them. On top of that a trigger is attached making the whole contraption just above 15cm high. The whole thing is dug into the ground and covered with a cm or two of dirt so that it goes off when a soldier (or civilian) steps on it.
This post is free (as in cheese in a mousetrap).