Flowers as land mine detectors
(via Slashdot via Yahoo)
Aresa has developed a genetic hybrid flower which is shaded red in the presence of certain chemicals. Most notably, it can detect extremely low concentrations of chemicals leeched into the soil due to explosive compounds found in most common land mines. IF this 'works as advertised' it will be quite impressive.
Detecting land-mines is hard.
Landmines are littered on almost every modern battlefied--especially in the third world.
I helped out in the mid 80's on some of the first radar-based attempts to do reliable land-mine detection. It didn't work so well. We even tried using neural-networks to filter the back-scatter--with little success.
It's soooo Veridian.
Bruce Sterling would be proud.