Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines 248
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."
Pitch (Score:5, Informative)
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 [discovermagazine.com], Treehugger [discovermagazine.com], and DNA [dnaindia.com]
Reguardless, the article has already been
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Re:Pitch (Score:5, Insightful)
This would likely be used for already existing minefields. Afghanistan is the most mined country in the world, and cleanup efforts are very tedious. I think that is the market for this product.
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Informative)
Afghanistan comes in 4th according to this source [listverse.com]. I was a little surprised that Egypt tops that list.
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a co-worker from Afghanistan in the past (nice guy). He said that his uncle would do it is to buy a field with land mines on it for cheap and then just let a herd of goats graze the property. If a goat exploded, that one was dinner.
Simple. Cheap. Effective.
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Funny)
Well sure, but who has to go recover the goat? For that you need goat-recovering dogs.
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pitch (Score:4, Funny)
... on leashes.
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Re:Pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes! That's the beauty of it! Now you know you have a minefield! (:
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As long as it doesn't result in any false negatives, I think it sounds like a great product for speeding up sweeping. Even if half of a 'field does end up alight, at least they can ignore the dark portions and concentrate on the lit areas.
In a sparsely mined area it could save weeks, months or years of painstaking work - or a few limbs in the case where currently nobody is bothering to sweep the area clean at all.
The next step is for the bacteria to auto dissolve the explosives, kind of like that blue stuff
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Well, it depends on how sensitive the bacteria are. Over time, rain, sun, organic processes, etc., will probably wash away and break down the explosive residue you spread, whereas it would continue to evaporate/disseminate from the actual mine locations. That would mean that long term mine fields like those on the North Korea DMZ would effectively be vulnerable unless you were prepared to re-seed the fields regularly with explosive residue (an expensive proposition). In the end, this might remove the last h
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Informative)
The method proposed by this group from Edinburgh actually takes advantage of that process, though. An old landmine or unexploded ordnance is probably going to be slowly leaching explosive out of the weapon. This means that soil near the device will contain the explosive itself, and also nitrites, which are produced as an intermediate step of breaking down the explosive material.
The group set up a sort of two-factor authorization. They genetically engineered promoters, proteins that bind to DNA and promote transcription of a particular genetic sequence, for two fluorescent proteins. Nitrite ion binds to the promoter for luxAB.GFP, which is a fusion protein of bacterial luciferase and green fluorescent protein. Thus, whenever nitrites are present, this protein gets made, and the bacterium glows a pleasing blue-green color. Not just fluoresces, mind you, but actively puts out light, due to the luciferase part. There is another sequence, for enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (eyfp). That promoter is activated by the presence of trinitrotoluene; the group used computational methods to develop a protein that binds DNA if it is also bound to TNT. Unlike the luxAB.GFP fusion protein, eyfp only fluoresces. It will glow yellow only if higher energy light has been input. So if pure TNT were present, the bacterium would make eyfp, but would only glow under UV light. When only nitrites are present, it actively glows blue. When both are present, the luxAB.GFP dumps light on eyfp, and the bacteria actively glow yellow. And then you call the bomb squad.
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Re:Pitch (Score:5, Informative)
Your first two links are the same, might have been meant to direct here [treehugger.com] instead.
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I'd like to introduce you to a truly enlightening product!
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Funny)
Do they have a bacteria that can help me with FreeCell? I was already pretty good at Minesweeper.
Re:Pitch (Score:5, Informative)
I'd also encourage people to take a look at the other iGEM projects [igem.org]. Lots of interesting reading.
Ah finally (Score:2)
Thanks.
too erasy in the daytimes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:too erasy in the daytimes.. (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't turn green, they glow green.
Kind of like the goo inside a green chemlight...
In the old days, if you wanted to do the area denial thing, you had to buy these expensive, heavy, hard to install landmines.
Then it was discovered you could scare the other guys away merely by using signs that say "landmine". In fact there is a UN standard / requirement for posting landmine signs around a minefield, scary white triangles, if I recall...
Now, technology marches on, and all you need is a big pack of green chemlights from walmart... crack them, drip the liquid in a field, and instant, cheap, area denial... Its also economic warfare, since mine field clearing is very expensive compared to buying a bunch of chemlights. Its also very demoralizing to the troops to know that glowing stuff might or might not be fake.
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Now, technology marches on, and all you need is a big pack of green chemlights from walmart... crack them, drip the liquid in a field, and instant, cheap, area denial..
Maybe for an hour or two, those glow sticks don't last that long. Mines have a much longer 'death span'.
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Now, technology marches on, and all you need is a big pack of green chemlights from walmart
How many Walmrts are there in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The insurgents have a steady supply of explosives and there's literally no reason for them to spend money on chemlights vs throwing nitrates around.
Not to mention that the military has the equipment necessary to distinguish between a glowstick and explosive residue.
This could make things worse... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now they'll either lace the entire field with C4, or they'll start using remote detonators when people move in to disarm.
I don't think you comprehend the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't think you comprehend the problem (Score:4, Informative)
I wouldn't say that they're "past" mines, if anything they lack the resources and facilities to make a proper mine, instead what they make are called Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) which can perform the job of a mine, but can't withstand the elements for decades like a properly encased munition mine can. Sure, many are triggered manually, but a pressure plate trigger can be made from the ringer out of a typical telephone - a piezo transducer, same thing used to measure earthquakes. Wire that through a relay to a diesel-nitrogen cocktail, and it'll take the treads off a tank no problem, but it couldn't last more than maybe 5 years before the batteries die.
Take a look at the tanks and APV junkyards in Afghanistan and try telling the repair crews there aren't any mines out there. And there are definitely booby traps in buildings where the bacteria could come in handy for sure.
Re:I don't think you comprehend the problem (Score:5, Informative)
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.
What you've said is not true. I said this to someone else, and at the risk of being modded redundant- BOTH triggers are used in Afghanistan against US troops. Remote detonation falls to the age-old electronic counter measure and it's best defense is a higher power jamer. This is compounded by the fact that the cheapest way to remote detonate is with cellphones, which only operate over a limited & known range of frequencies. Because of this flaw other types of triggers (force/pressure based) are still used (and because for pressure based explosions no enemy has to be physically present ['set it and forget it']).
(I work in land mine detection)
Re:This could make things worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
Re:This could make things worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Now they'll either lace the entire field with C4, or they'll start using remote detonators when people move in to disarm.
The real problem is there is no magic biological way to detect explosives, like the force, or some DnD "reveal invisible" spell.
So, what'll happen, is anywhere the mines have degraded and cracked open and are thus probably inert, will glow green, so people will avoid those "dangerous" areas, and anywhere the mines remain hermetically sealed, will not glow, thus it looks "safe" but is actually very dangerous.
Even worse, its not failsafe. If a spot is not glowing, is that because coverage was not 100% becaus
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So, what'll happen, is anywhere the mines have degraded and cracked open and are thus probably inert, will glow green, so people will avoid those "dangerous" areas, and anywhere the mines remain hermetically sealed, will not glow, thus it looks "safe" but is actually very dangerous.
If machine scanners can detect explosives what makes you think living things can't? Are these scanners just scams to get money from airports, border crossings, and seaports?
Even worse, its not failsafe. If a spot is not glowing,
How long will it live? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Ok, troll, i'll bite...
Care to back that statement up with some sort of data? I happen to have made a career writing software for IED detection and disposal devices. I can tell you first hand that IEDs exist.
I'm so freaking tired of god damn conspiracy theorists. Why don't all the trolls go back to mirroring goatse, like the good old days?
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I believe there are a few thousand people who would disagree with you. The whole first hand knowledge thing.
Nice idea, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Exploded mines and artillery shells leave unburnt residue.
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This could be a setback, but my guess is that there would be a "glowing bacterial density" that you could look at. If everything's faintly glowing green in an area, then there's a spot where it's bright green, you'd take special care around that spot.
I'm not 100% sure how it would work, but this could save lives.
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I wonder if it works in the dark? It might be confusing when using night vision.
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I wonder if it works in the dark?
It glows so it should be easier to see in the dark.
Falcon
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If everything's faintly glowing green in an area, then there's a spot where it's bright green, you'd take special care around that spot.
Still no go. That bright spot is either uneven application of the mystery bacteria, or its a piece of shrapnel from the artillery shell/grenade/whatever.
Grey Goo 2.0? (Score:4, Funny)
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...or get nanobots to rebuild him.
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I vote to call it "really dirty bomb."
"Not only did I get hit with mine shrapnel, it was covered in gross glowing e.coli. I nearly crapped myself from the mine explosion. Later, I -did- crap myself because of the diarrhea it caused."
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So can I add this the list of possible humanity-ending catalysts and/or future Michael Crichton novel plotlines?
The one I'm waiting for is a genetically-engineered cellulose-to-ethanol bacterium that can survive in the wild. With all of the biofuel companies rushing to come up with a commercially-viable product, there's lots of opportunity for an accident to unleash a critter capable of eating all plant life on earth. It will doom humanity, but at least we'll have lots of cheap booze to drink as the planet withers and dies.
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What they don't tell you... (Score:2)
The bacteria is a strain of bubonic plague that's more deadly than the mines themselves...
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Oh great ! (Score:5, Funny)
Glowing Zombie Apocalypse (Score:2)
starting in 3... 2.... 1....
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Wait, zombies are explosive too? :-P
Cheers
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
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If you get your legs blown off thanks to a previously undiscovered mine, don't come running to me.
Legitimately good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Legitimately good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're right -- it is a very good idea.
The problem is, all these critics are a teeny bit right when they say it's not going to work. Alas.
Not so very many years ago, there was an initiative to grow flowers whose petals turn red if they hit a mine. A lot more practical than bacteria, and it seemed to work very well, too -- but they got booted out of that African country they were testing in rather rough-handedly. It's a sad tale, but the fact is there are more warmongers than do-gooders and these things are immensely difficult to see to fruition.
I do wish them luck, though.
Don't forget Vietnam and a lot of other wars.... (Score:2)
Well noted - it's a lot of the old mines that people have forgotten about that continue to cause problems. I've visited Cambodia and there are a lot there because of the Khmer Rouger period there, and in Laos and Vietnam there are a lot due to the "Vietnam War" as we think of it in the West from over 40 years ago. Lots of other conflicts in Africa and other places as well. Not so bad if you're in a rich country or you've got resources that people want access to (e.g. oil) but a lot of places have just been
I'm surprised that this technology is available (Score:2)
Seems like this could massively reduce the military usefulness of minefields. Isn't a huge minefield sitting on the border between North and South Korea helping keep the peace there, by deterring North Korean military aggression? What if the North Koreans can spot all the mines?
--PM
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It's not like it was impossible to detect and disarm mines before this. It was just more time consuming and expensive. Mines are just one aspect of the Demilitarized Zone, and would be basically useless by themselves. There are troops from both countries patrolling their side of it in case anyone tries to cross over, and massive amounts of guns and artillery. Nevertheless, the North has gone on incursions in to the South's side of the DMZ. And the biggest threat from NK has been the tunnels they dug al
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Not really. The DMZ (as far as I know) is the only place where a minefield still actually serves a military purpose. Furthermore, without an ability to disarm the mines remotely, it wouldn't be that advantageous to know where they are, since the North Korean forces would be maneuvering to avoid the mines and would be much more vulnerable to counterattack. The US and the South would know they were coming from troop buildups and the spraying of the field with bacteria (it takes a few hours to activate). A
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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.
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There's nowhere on earth usefully defended by minefields alone. Not even the DMZ. And if you could sit and spray the mine fields with this bacteria and disarm/maneuver between them unmolested, then you could have done that yesterday. But they don't (outside of small incursions), because there's a hell of a lot more firepower than just mines that is being pointed across the DMZ.
Minesweeping (Score:5, Funny)
False Sense of Security (Score:3, Informative)
Detecting mines is great, I'd be pretty damn worried about the ones that arn't detected however.
Re:False Sense of Security (Score:4, Insightful)
If the bacteria only glow WITHOUT the presence of landmine. That way, at best you get false positives which is less dangerous than a false negative, in this situation.
Bah, they beat me to it... (Score:2)
Enders Game (Score:2)
Why do I get the feeling, when slashdoters discuss military tactics and strategies, that we're inside some kind of "Enders Game" scenario, and some pentagon general, recently reassigned from SG-1, is high-fiving cmdr taco right now, over our great insights into warfare?
At last (Score:2)
This terrible scourge of mimes is finally over!
Oh fudge, I misread the article.
Fluorescence != glow in the dark (Score:2, Informative)
If this has some success rate = GOOD (Score:2)
A friend worked overseas in ordnance disposal. It is, by most accounts, one of the most dangerous job out there. He left, but I'll be quite content if I know more soldiers and peacekeepers in the future will be kept safer.
Even if this thing had a 100% success rate, I'd still be cautious about clearing the minefield. But this can at least help where you know with some certainty there are mines in the area, and you will have some certainty there is a mine in that location or within the vicinity.
This does not
Ahh, I was wondering what was going on..... (Score:2)
They must have been testing this around my place, my back yard is glowing blue.
Is this (Score:2)
Is this the glowing green goo that created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
Prevent Land Mining (Score:2)
I hope this cheap and easy way to display where land mines are hidden is enough to stop people from using landmines altogether.
Good, now spray the gates! (Score:2)
A benign bacteria like this, sprayed over a crowd, might reveal suicide bombers if it reacts quickly enough.
Great. (Score:3, Funny)
Now antiseptics will get on a list of controlled substances used to hide location of mines.
Entire world covered with the bacteria (Score:2)
I assume they probably engineered the bacteria so it doesn't survive indefinitely, but it would be interesting if it mutated and began spreading and eventually spread to every corner of the world, so any place that had explosives would glow!
Water? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Bacteria do, however, exchange DNA with nearby organisms, not necessarily of the same species. Some DNA has been incorporated into "infected" hosts, or picked up through plant root systems, and bacteria shuffle DNA between themselves, as well.
There's more to knowledge than just mis-quoting some Wikipedia article, since the one you referenced does, in fact, describe gene transfer (BTW, use the URL tags).
On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#Growth_and_reproduction [wikipedia.org], search for the word "conjugati
Re:The hills are alive... (Score:4, Informative)
> 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.
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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 oxyge
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You do realize that bacteria are everywhere right? Just because we modified this one to glow doesn't give it some unique survival advantage or propensity to mutate. If anything, the bacteria is going to be a monoculture and more susceptible to chemicals and preditors.
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Anyone else get a slightly uneasy feeling at the idea of crop-dusting entire areas of land with living bacteria that glow?
Did you ever eat cottage cheese or yogurt? They're full of bacteria. In fact, if you get diarrhea you should eat cottage cheese afterwards to replace the beneficial gut bacteria that the diarrhea flushes out.
What assurances do we have that the bacteria in cottage cheese won't mutate, self-replicate, or turn against you in the form of some horrendous new super-bug that makes the 20,000 la
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Anyone else get a slightly uneasy feeling at the idea of crop-dusting entire areas of land with living bacteria that glow?
Not when a child's life can be saved. As for living bacteria in dirt, a teaspoon of dirt contains an estimated 10,000 species of bacteria [physorg.com]. And there are organisms that naturally glow [physorg.com].
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 li
Re:Dangerous, Tedious, Expensive ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You are still a virgin. Admit it.
If you weren't you know one of two things:
Male: always looking forward to the next fuck.
Female: always looking forward to the next fuck.
Humans (and chips if I remember right) are one of the few species that have sex just for the enjoyment of it.
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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 theref
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Oops.
Missed a spot.
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Re:Counter-measures (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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I really like us to come up with better debugging techniques before we go further into these bio-engineering stuff.
You may not think much about it but ways to safely detect landmines can save a number of arms, legs, and lifes. They could help avoid another child losing a leg while playing in a field where landmines were placed.
Falcon