G'day,
Just found this in my "Nature" journal articles this morning. The question is
who would volunteer to do the watering?!
Plants to uncover landmines Genetically engineered plants turn red when
growing over a mine.
A genetically engineered plant that detects landmines in soil by changing
colour could prevent thousands of deaths and injuries by signalling where
explosives are concealed....
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040126/040126-10.html
Cheers
Those mine smelling rats- they could be trained to seek out the plants
on top of the mines and then would activate a can of water strapped to their
backs...:)
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
As someone who works in this field I'm rather skeptical about all these lab
grown ideas. As the article states they do not know how much gas the plant
needs to turn red. I would imagine that a waterproofed (and thus sealed) mine
would release very high quantities of that gas. And what other sources can
produce the same gas? There must be other nitrate based stuff in the
ground that might give of the same gas. Would like to see the chemical formula
of the special fertilizer too. If
there's nitrogen in it somwhere....
Nothing beats a good detector, a fresh set of batteries and a patient and
methodical approach of the problem.
Ludo
> Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> G'day,