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Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines
MikeChino writes "Sifting through minefields to remove hidden threats is a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap. The new strain of bacteria can be sprayed onto local affected areas or air-dropped over entire fields of mines. Within a few hours the bacteria strain begins to glow wherever traces of explosive chemicals are present."
I dunno, sounds like a sales pitch to me... you should have either written it in all caps Billy Mays style or said, "Made in Scotland... you know the Scottish make good stuff"
/.ed so here are some other sources: Discover, Treehugger, and DNA
Reguardless, the article has already been
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
It would seem if you could get this strain to survive in the soil for some months you could spray road sides even ahead of the implanting of IEDs.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Exploded mines and artillery shells leave unburnt residue.
So can I add this the list of possible humanity-ending catalysts and/or future Michael Crichton novel plotlines? I vote to call it "glow goo" or perhaps simply "bactoswarm".
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Now we'll all have to be dunked in a vat of this stuff every time I go through TSA security. We get more like sheep every day.
Nullius in verba
Now they'll either lace the entire field with C4, or they'll start using remote detonators when people move in to disarm.
The largest problem with land mines is that there are so many in areas where there is no longer any kind of combat - kids or other civilians go in the fields and lose life and limb. This helps with that. We're talking WW2 era stuff here.
Modern warfare by insurgents is ALREADY past mines, since they don't have an endless amount of money to spend - they already place explosives and use remote detonators when troops come by.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yet *another* source of light pollution.
The biggest danger with mines is not that they explode - it's that no one really knows where the mines are, and that they are often right around civilian areas.
Your two scenarios would actually both be a vast improvement over the current situation.
In the first instance, you just have to get one little corner to detonate, and the entire field should go off. At that point, de-mining via artillery-shelling will actually work. If you meant to say that the mine fields are going to be much denser, great as well - you can actually employ large-scale de-mining equipment and have it be more cost-efficient than the hand-demining.
In the second instance, people sitting at a remote trigger actually make the mine safer: it means that there are less mines to go around (detonators are scarce, mines are not), someone knows where the mine is and it won't randomly go off when a kid decides to play catch in the field.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Am I the only one here who is aware of how bad of a problem land mines are to civilians in many third world countries? The response here seems generally negative, but if this technology helps to diffuse old land mine fields, it would be wonderful. Just because it was planted in WW2 doesn't guarantee that it's become inactive or that it won't kill you now.
Without RTFA:
1 - Rocks and nearby puppies.
2 - Bacteria are asexual. These bacteria will, however, be able to spread an "asexual agenda" among native bacteria, who will begin to glow in the presence of other objects, like discarded cans, to look cool and "green."
3- Except for puppies, the bacteria are harmless. Unless you like eating gunpowder or landmines.
4- More landmines! No, wait, they'll be outbred by normal bacteria soon enough.
> The hills are alive...
True. Topsoil is several percent bacteria by weight.
> What assurances do we have that the bacteria won't mutate, self-replicate, or
> turn against its master in the form of some horrendous new super-bug that
> makes the 20,000 land-mine casualties a year seem like a drop in a bucket?
None. And the sames goes for the millions of other species of bacteria that infest every square meter of the Earth's surface.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They don't turn green, they glow green. So you just have to go mine clearing in the dark.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I hope that as the bacteria glows, it arranges itself into numbers indicating how many mines are nearby. It should making identifying the mined locations a simple matter of elimination.
Detecting mines is great, I'd be pretty damn worried about the ones that arn't detected however.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
Why is this parent modded 'funny' ? In Eastern and African countries little kids *are* actually being used to detect mines: by blowing them up, and losing their arms, legs, or lives... I do not see what's so funny about that at all...
not infest, but inhabit.
We are the Borg...
I suspect that if that particular area was crop-dusted with the bacteria, the result would resemble a raggedly cut electroluminescent strip and be visible from space.
Just FYI to all the people in this thread misusing the term. Fluorescence require an external source of radiation to glow, but only during that exposure. Think UV light and neon paint.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
I don't think this invention is being touted as a militarily useful tool. It's intended to help with the cleanup of the bazillions of mines that are still hidden in many many parts of the world where fighting has long since stopped, but the mines still remain behind.
If the US military needs a path through a suspected minefield, they're not going to spray this stuff, wait a few hours, then send some soldiers out to individually dig up all the green spots. They've got machines that are basically giant armored bulldozers that they can use to cut a straight path through. They also have trucks that basically fire a chain of explosives that clear out a straight path. But it's not feasible to use these techniques for large scale clean up because there's too much ground to cover, and it's a very destructive process.
So you're probably right that if someone was laying down a minefield this afternoon they could find some fairly easy ways to counter this bacteria. Fortunately, I don't think anyone is going to spend the time and expense to spray explosive residue around a bunch of mines that were buried in WW2
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
A friend of mine was in africa a while back and had noticed something peculure when he visited many years ago, the women always walked behind the men, now many years lator, the men walk behind of the women. When he asked one of the viligers if there was a feminist movement and if women were more more prominent, the viliger said No Land Mines!
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
A properly laid mine field will not suffer from sympathetic detonation of another mine. Most mines are placed 5 meters apart or more. Artillery is effective against certain types of mines, ones with trip wires or tilt rods, even then I would hesitate going in unless under a more serious threat (ie direct fire).
A single mine with a remote detonator is barely effective. The whole point of a mine is place it, and forget it. If you need someone (or 2) to babysit it cuts into you combat effectiveness.
Many modern anti-personal mines have a time that the mine is active. After 2 weeks it goes inert, or explodes in place.
Being an ex Combat Engineer, clearing minefields in Bosnia I can see the benefit of this technology. It could be a quick way to determine if a field is 'clear' or needs further investigation. Large scale offensive attacks, you can spray this over the battlefield and know shortly if it is clear.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Now antiseptics will get on a list of controlled substances used to hide location of mines.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Any other genius thoughts you'd like to share with us? Like how it's easy to sink a battleship, all you have to do is make a hole the right size in the right place.
Seriously, do you think military engineers haven't worked out how to set mines so that 300 mines cause more than one casualty? If one man set off an entire minefield it would hardly be worth getting your spade dirty planting them, would it? You'd do more harm to the enemy throwing the bastard things at them.
You're not an armchair general. You aren't even a moron. You're an armchair moron.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Note quite right. The assurance IS the millions of other species of bacteria. All life is compromise, and a bacteria which mutates and becomes ultra-lethal to humans will probably be eaten by its neighbour bacteria, which is more suited for such mundane things as surviving in the soil where they live.
It's the same reason why the grey-goo scenario is silly. The earth may look beautiful and pristine, but in reality it's a shockingly hostile environment. You've got a corrosive atmosphere (full of nasty oxygen), soaked in a potent solvent (water) and it's infested by machines, tiny and small, which delight in consuming everything around them. You think Mars is a hostile environment? The rovers wouldn't have lasted a month in most of earth's biomes. We just don't notice, most of the time, because evolution (and our own intelligence and experience) has made us very, very, very good at survival.
why can't they do something similar and temporarily be celebate to avoid being responsible for all of that misery and suffering?
The social/cultural issues are for more complex then that. A vast majority of women in these countries can't because they don't have the rights to. The stats on rape in some countries are hideous, and many women are stuck in relationships where they can't tell their partner to use birth control and they can't get out of these relationships for any number of religious/socio-economic/cultural reasons. The guys in many of these countries still have this idiotic notion that using a condom isn't manly and therefore won't, hence why HIV/AIDs rates are also awful in many of these countries. Irresponsible sex is gonna happen 'cause of social/religious/cultural reasons so long as the men in these cultures believe that sex makes them a man and women find that one of the most reliable forms of security/employment is prostitution or being someone's girl.
But wait, it gets worse. Assuming you can change cultural ideas of sex and gender, birth control isn't the easiest thing to get because of foreign aid policies concerning family planning. In countries where people can barely eat, reliable birth control is often considered an unnecessary expense by many, so the options boil down to condom giveaways and (often illegal) abortions. Currently organizations that provide abortions can get aid, but this stance changes every administration (Bush banned aid to these organizations.) A good number of the organizations that provide abortions are also the ones that provide family planning support and information, like condoms. Then there are the organizations that are limited in what they can provide because the regions are too dangerous to work in or there are religious/cultural barriers to birth control.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Its not an addiction you arsehole - its a biological imperative to fuck each other!
If you lived in a situation where you were dirt poor (not can't afford rent poor - but can't afford the 3p can of beans poor), had absolutely no entertainment beyond watching the occasional soldier get eaten by lions, and generally lived a life of suffering day after day, continuing to struggle only because you don't let the alternative to survival cross your mind; then maybe you would understand the need to find comfort and joy where you can.
IF it was just a matter of waiting till the shop opens so you can buy more condoms, you would have a point. But if you didn't know when the next truckload of the things was even going to make it the closest town, let alone disseminated down to your village, then you wouldn't be holding your breath or your balls mate and you're disgustingly naive if you think you could or would.
If we could swap muppets like you for these starving people, and fill the destitute countries with morons that think 'trying harder' is all that is required, we would be able to solve more than one set of problems in one go.