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The Do-It-Yourself Attack Ad
Here’s the last of my essays for this year’s annual “Year in Ideas” issue of the New York Times Magazine:
Land-Mine-Detecting Plants
by Clive ThompsonThis January, the Danish company Aresa Biodetection announced that it had produced an unusual new variant of thale-cress, a small flowering weed: a strain that turns red in the presence of land mines. Aresa scientists had genetically modified the weed so that it reacts to nitrogen dioxide, a gas commonly emitted by explosives. A result is a new way to detect mines: sprinkle the seeds over a suspect area, wait a few weeks for the thale-cress to grow and — presto — wherever they turn red, you have danger. ”It’s much more efficient,” says Simon Ostergaard, Aresa’s C.E.O. ”It’s very tedious to clear mines the normal way. You’re putting a stick in the ground every three centimeters. One man can sometimes only do two square meters a day.”
Given that there are tens of millions of explosives still strewn across 80 countries — killing and injuring more than 8,000 people a year — the idea has intriguing merits. The plants could help free up precious abandoned farmland by showing farmers where it is still safe to tread. What’s more, the weeds can be genetically altered to detect many other environmental hazards, like heavy metals in the soil. Still, there are plenty of hurdles: Aresa is hoping its invention will pass Europe’s strict regulations governing genetically modified crops. Critics aren’t convinced the plants are accurate enough, since land-mine clearing cannot, for obvious reasons, tolerate errors. (Worse, cows might be attracted to the weeds growing over mines, with disastrous consequences.) Nevertheless, Ostergaard says he hopes to begin trials in Africa next year. If he is successful, the symbolism couldn’t be more lovely: the brutality of land mines quelled by a humble flower.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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North Dakota the most outgoing state, according to study of “the geography of personality”
» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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