Genetically Modified Flower Detects Landmines 518
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.
KEEP MOVING!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
On the topic of DNA (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an example of unique thinking. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's even self-limiting, so despite being a weed it won't choke out the local flora.
Good Idea (Score:1, Interesting)
What about fertilisers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Congratulations! (Score:3, Interesting)
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).Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
unintended consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
Princess Diana (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely one of the better use of genetics.
If they really want to make money..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
poetic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What Happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of puts a new twist on the old anti-Goldwater commercial, eh?
Any kid growing up in a country where landmines are a problem is probably very likely to listen to the nice soldiers that say "stay away from flowers that look like this... we grow them on mine fields."
The alternative is to further engineer the flowers to look or smell unpleasant, so kids will leave them alone.
Would be useful for WWI battlefields also (Score:2, Interesting)
sPh
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the weeds were fertile, then they could increase their density to the maximum the field could sustain. If one could make the weed's fertility "time out" after a few generations or depend on some fertilizer only present in the area of deployment, then one could deploy a fertile weed that could not spread too far.
Of course, "Jurassic Park" showed us that any genetically-engineered technique for controlling a population is doomed to spectacular failure
Re:Thought it was mimes (Score:1, Interesting)
"What's so great about that? I've always been able to detect flowers. What's wrong with the current mimes that they... oh."
Of course, the image of "Mime Squads" driving around in their Mimemobiles looking out for flowers is quite funny. They would see one, stop the car, run over to it and make hand gestures around it. Is it a box? A warning sign? Who knows!
Those wacky mimes.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The USA still supports the use of landmines (Score:5, Interesting)
The US does, however, clean up areas that it's mined once it's done with them. I doubt it's a perfect job, but it's considerably better than the vast number of military forces that use mines and don't clean them up (which is where the issue has come from).
If anyone can suggest an equally effective deterrent to invasion that requires an equal amount of manpower, I'm sure the US Army would like to hear about it.
It's not an issue of "landmine lovers", it's an issue of doing protection in an effective manner. (Which, BTW, is the condition on signing in 2006... AFAIK, nobody has stepped up to the plate). I haven't found any reports of the US using landmines anywhere else -- including Iraq -- since 1997 (the mines at Guantanamo were removed in 1999). They did stockpile them, but they apparantly weren't used. The US has not sold landmines internationally since 1993.
BTW, you missed Pakistan, Georgia, Belarus, Egypt, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mongolia (parliamentary - very much questionable), Morocco (constitutional monarchy; similar to the UK's), Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Tuvalu. All have some form of representive government along the lines of a republic or democracy (no, the US is not a democracy -- it's a republic). Between those and the ones you listed, it's about a third of the list. Admittedly, some of the countries on the (full) list probably just haven't bothered -- particularly Tuvalu and Tonga.
In Quebec City (Score:2, Interesting)
They just use metal detectors though.
Poetic and all, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Detection limits (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
When are you murderers going to sign the Treaty! (Score:3, Interesting)
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 Landmines [icblm.org]Re:When are you murderers going to sign the Treaty (Score:1, Interesting)
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.