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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.
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
Shouldn't the gardeners blowing up while planting flowers be enough?
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.
OK, seriously, this is great. Too many kids are missing body parts from old munitions.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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?
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.
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 ...
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
okAll you have to do is look at the numbers in the adjacent boxes.
People are so lazy!
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.
The article already states that these flowers cannot reproduce.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
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
"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
...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
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.
The nice thing about these flowers is they have a pretty good idea of what the market will be like. Price the seeds so that de-mining the world will cover the research and production costs, leaving about a 10% profit.
"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.
Will these flowers be genetically engineered to have numbers on them, indicating how many mines are growing in the plots next to them?
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]
They're going to be called "MyDoom" blooms.
Watch for them in an e-mail real soon.
Small print: you need to plow the minefield first.
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!
Will they grow in desserts?
They'll grow in cake and fresh pie, but they won't grow so well in cold climates such as ice cream.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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 LandminesWhat 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).